Triage
by Guile
Summary: Take this sinking boat and point us home. We've still got time. Sakura time travel fic.
1. The oldest story

A/N: I've seen several very well done Naruto time travel fics, and at least one where both Sasuke and Naruto return. It made me wonder... how would Sakura handle it? Unfortunately, the plot-bunny stalled out on me around the chuunin exam (bet you guys have never seen _that_ happen in this fandom, right?), but that's a ways into the future and I hope to resolve it by the time I get there.

* * *

"Thank you, Sakura. Well done." Iruka-sensei smiled at her, and handed her a shining, new _hitae-ite_.

Sakura blinked once, feeling disoriented. It was like waking from a daydream; she felt unsettled and everything seemed oddly fuzzy for a second. She tried to think. It took her far too long to remember that there had been a Plan. It had been a good Plan. Well, actually it was a Plan made up of one part guesswork and three parts desperation, but it had _worked_. Kind of. She was here, in the past. Or, she supposed, the present. She gave the examiners a smile that likely looked as wobbly and unbalanced as she felt, and hurried away from the chuunin sitting behind the wide wooden desk.

Right into a crowd of twelve-year-olds that were simultaneously incredibly familiar and not. There was Sasuke-kun, taking time from his brooding to grace them with a superior smile: number-one rookie, and proud of it, even if it was only a small stepping stone on his path. Ino was going on beside her, something about being surprised they'd found a _hitae-ite_ large enough for her enormous forehead. "Shut up, Ino-pig," she retorted, but it was half-hearted at best and without any true anger, and a wave of exasperated fondness welled up within her at the sight of the girl who had been her chief rival and best friend all in one.

And there were all the other familiar faces: shy Hinata-chan, and the annoyingly loud Kiba, and Shino, and Chouji, and... the entire Rookie Nine was in attendance, all twelve-years-old and flushed with success. Adults were there as well. Her parents were easy to spot, since the Haruno women were not the only ones with pink hair; the males of clan Haruno were likewise cursed with that unfortunate trait. And there were the Yamanakas, both Ino's parents looked like they'd stepped from the pages of a modelling magazine, and some family members that _had_ to be Inuzukas with those facial tattoos, not to mention all the dogs. But in all the melee, she couldn't spy one very important face. Where was Naruto? The kid just wasn't happy if he wasn't the center of attention, and he was nowhere to be found.

Until she spotted him over on the swings, looking dejected, and without a _hitae-ite_. She tried to remember - he'd shown up with a _hitae-ite_ the next day for the team assignments, hadn't he? He must have. Graduation day had been a long time ago, subjectively, but she was sure he'd had one.

She was about to go over to him, when she heard a pair of women talking about him: "He's the only one who failed," and "Serves him right." She very nearly bloodied their noses for them, before remembering that Haruno Sakura did not go about punching women in the street. Even if they _were_ slandering a teammate, someone who tried so _hard_ at everything he did...

By the time she looked back, he was gone, the swing swaying slowly. She still half-wanted to go chasing after him, but there was no point. She'd see him again tomorrow, and Sasuke-kun too. But for now, she needed to _think_. Naruto and Sasuke were the ones who got by on brute strength and raw talent - Sakura had other skills.

She barely heard her parents' congratulations, and was silent the entire walk home, trying to puzzle out what she was going to _do._

* * *

Later that night, there was some sort of fuss, with ninja running around searching for something or other, but Sakura figured it didn't have much to do with her.

She'd eaten a hurried dinner - she'd barely tasted her oden, which she remembered had been a favorite of hers at this age - before hurrying up to her room to come up with an attack plan. When they'd come up with the idea, they'd had to work night and day just to work out all the complex seals in order to bind Naruto's chakra to do what they wanted - something that, according to all logic, should have been impossible. There'd been no time to work out what to do when she got there. If she got there. They - she and Kakashi - had been unable to discover when and where exactly it would set her down. It seemed like a pretty big coincidence that she had 'arrived', so to speak, at such a crucial turning point in her life, at the team assignments. Perhaps her emotions, or her memories, had more control over the process than they'd realized, she didn't know.

Their 'plan', if you could call it that, had way more guesswork in it than she was comfortable with. It probably would have been better if she'd managed to go back earlier, give her more time to prepare... but she decided to just be a grateful little kunoichi that she hadn't been reduced to her component atoms, or with her adult mind ending up in Sasuke's body, or a dozen other horrifying possible outcomes.

After a little experimentation - and with only one broken piece of furniture, she'd never liked that dresser anyway - it seemed that she still had her exacting chakra control, even more finely-honed than when she'd been an academy graduate. But her physical strength and chakra reserves were the same as they'd been when she'd really been twelve - which was to say, pretty much below average. She still knew all her jutsu, but with the amount of chakra most of them required, she doubted she'd be able to heal much of anything before succumbing to chakra exhaustion and passing out. Hardly an ideal outcome. She wasn't sure she could summon the slugs, since she hadn't technically signed a contract with them at this point in time, and her room wasn't a very good place to try summonings anyway.

So, she was pretty much what she'd been when she really _was_ twelve; an average genin with low-level strength and high intelligence. Well, she might have a new trick or two up her sleeve... but now, she had time to fix things, to make things better. Assuming it played out as it had before - gods, let it be the same - she could make improvements. She wouldn't be such a hindrance. She had a year to train and get strong enough to go with Naruto and the others to get Sasuke-kun back. No, she could even keep it from ever getting that far.

She could... she could find a way to avoid Orochimaru, maybe, and keep Sasuke-kun from getting the cursed seal. Or better yet, find a way to kill that snake entirely, though she hadn't the faintest idea how such a thing might be accomplished against a ninja who was by all accounts immortal. She remembered very well what he'd done to Sasuke-kun, and she'd like very much to find a way to pay him back for it. In spades.

But she'd likely only get one shot at changing the timeline; if she succeeded and derailed the track of coming events, her future knowledge would be nearly useless, and if she failed but revealed that she knew more than she should... well... she'd be in deep, deep trouble. She simply couldn't stand up to the kind of enemies she'd come to the attention of. The Akatsuki and Orochimaru - even the average jounin, if she were honest with herself - were far, far out of her league.

But, she acknowledged, first things first. Before all that, she had to get sorted into Team Seven!


	2. Birds of a feather that flock together

By morning, Sakura was as prepared as she figured she would ever be. She had her old pouch of supplies and a bracer of kunai, but of course her younger self didn't have any of the medical supplies or other gear she had collected over the better part of 5 years. She felt kind of exposed and vulnerable without them, like she was missing part of who she was. She'd just have to suck it up and deal with it.

She stared in front of her mirror, her mother's voice calling her for breakfast only background noise. "Okay," she coached herself. "You are Haruno Sakura, age twelve; shallow, Sasuke-chasing genin of average abilities." She clapped her hands together, whether in excitement or prayer even she wasn't certain.

Now she just had to make them believe it. She went down to breakfast. She was wearing her old red dress, mentally wincing at what Kakashi-sensei's first thought regarding her would probably be. Sure, it was both pretty and functional, and hardly as impractical as some of the kunoichi outfits out there _(Kurenai),_ but it didn't really send a message of competence and willingness to work hard. But the dress had been the only thing that would stand up to any sort of rigorous training, her other clothes were all dresses and things, civilian clothes. And she damn well planned for the bell test to be rigorous, this time around; no passing out in the first five minutes for her. _Maybe I can look into buying some pants,_ she thought idly. She could buy cute clothes again when she wasn't so far behind everyone in her ninja skills, she promised herself.

Breakfast passed her by in a sudden flash of nerves. First meetings could be messed up so easily. What if she somehow didn't do something right, and screwed it all up? Or gave something away? Kakashi and his Sharingan were scarily perceptive, for all he never seemed to pay attention to anything except his perverted reading material. She answered her mom's concerned questions about what she would be doing today mechanically, and got moving as soon as she could. By the time she reached her front door she was almost running.

Almost as soon as she hit the street, she ran into Ino. Her best friend lived only two blocks away - the Yamanakas weren't one of those clans that sectioned themselves off in their own little encampments, like the Hyuuga and the Uchiha had - and they'd been walking to the Academy together since they were 6 years old. That hadn't changed even when their friendship had mutated into a quasi-serious rivalry.

Took a deep breath and carefully stepped into her predetermined role.

"Are you feeling okay, Sakura? You were really out of it yesterday." Ino asked, a bit of concern showing through. Then she grinned. "You wouldn't be coming down with something, would you? Sasuke-kun wouldn't like you much if you were runny-nosed and sneezing."

"Just fine, Ino," she replied, falling into the game. "I'm sure I could get Sasuke-kun to notice me if I were half-dead with fever." She thought she'd captured just the right amount of their old juvenile one-upmanship, and mentally patted herself on the back. _Score one for Sakura, actress supreme,_ Inner Sakura grinned._ All right, damn it!_

Ino could be perceptive when she felt like it, but it would take a mind-reader to get from 'Sakura is acting weird' to 'Sakura is from the future.' Oh wait, she _was_ a mind-reader. Maybe a little caution, then.

Pretty soon, they were rushing off down the street, growling at each other. _This is kind of fun,_ she admitted to herself. After Sasuke had gone, she and Ino had drifted apart as she fell more and more into her training with Tsunade, and Ino became more attached to her own team and the study of her family's jutsu took up more of her time. Getting into catfights with Ino gave her a certain bittersweet feeling of nostalgia. She figured she might as well get used to the feeling, because she didn't see it leaving her anytime soon.

And if Ino noticed her heart wasn't really in it or that she seemed distracted, she didn't say anything. They charged into the building neck-and-neck.

A judicious foot sweep as they came down the hallway sent Ino tumbling and missing the open door. She knew a lot more taijutsu that she used to, even if it would take time and effort to make it natural and ingrain it into her muscles again. Sakura stepped into the gap, hip-checked Naruto aside - rather more gently than she could remember doing when she really was twelve (twelve the first time? Twelve again? Time travel could give even her big forehead headaches) - and slid into the seat between the two boys. She flashed them a grin. "You guys don't mind if I sit here, do you, Naruto, Sasuke-kun?"

Naruto got red in the face and stammered that it wasn't a problem. _Just from me noticing he was here? The poor kid is _so_ starved for attention_. Well, she guessed he wasn't really a kid, no more than she was anyway, but that's how she thought of them. They were just so... _young_. Sasuke just grunted noncommittally. He was, Sakura admitted, seriously cute even at twelve. And she knew from personal experience that he would only grow even more handsome in later years. Too bad about all the emotional baggage. She didn't have the first clue on how to piece that broken child back together again.

Pretty soon, Naruto and Sasuke were ignoring her in favor of engaging in a stare-down with each other. Story of her life. Ino re-appeared and slammed her palm down on the desk. Sakura looked up at her with artful innocence.

'That was a dirty trick, Forehead Girl," she hissed. Sakura widened her eyes so that she looked, if possible, even more innocent of any blame.

"Me, Ino-pig? Whatever do you mean?" She added gaily, "First come, first serve, you know."

A thump drew her attention back to Naruto and Sasuke, who seemed to be trying to electrocute each other to death with their eyes from about three inches away, Naruto crouched on Sasuke's desk.

She checked the situation against her memories. A lot had happened since then, but she'd always had pretty good recall. _Hey, come to think of it, didn't they end up...?_

She didn't have long to wait. Less than a minute later, the pony-tailed kid in the front row leaned back, and the end result - a Naruto-on-Sasuke liplock. Sakura's lips twitched.

"-Snerk-" The sound erupted as she tried desperately to keep her laughter under control. Sakura put her head down on her folded arms and began giggling helplessly from the looks on Sasuke and Naruto's faces. Their utter horror was hilarious to watch. Perhaps that made her a bad person. But it was just so _funny_.

Naruto abruptly stopped hacking and choking and whispered, "I sense danger." She was impressed by the weight of killing intent the girls were producing. Maybe they had what it took to be ninja, after all. Soon he was getting the crap beaten out of him by a third of the class - just about every female in the room except Sakura and Hinata.

She didn't know why they were so pissed off. She thought it was kind of hot. Just replace the little kid versions with what she remembered from the future - oh yeah. Rowr.

"... We've arranged the groups such that overall abilities are equivalent." Iruka-sensei finished. She blinked. She'd lost a little time, there. Nothing important had happened while she was daydreaming, at least. Then went the reading of names. first, second, third, fourth... she couldn't even match most of their names to faces. For all she knew, they might have never passed their sensei's tests and made genin. Poor kids. "Next, seventh group." _Moment of truth, here..._ "Uzumaki Naruto. Haruno Sakura. Uchiha Sasuke."

She couldn't help it. She did a little victory pose along with Naruto, fist thrust into the air. Though likely not for the reason people thought: things were situated exactly as she wanted them to, Naruto and Sasuke both. There was no reason to think that the team assignments would be different, but still, somewhere in the back of her mind, she'd worried.

She resisted the urge to cackle evilly on the grounds that it might scare off her new teammates.

* * *

A short time later, she was leaning back against one of the desk rows, bored out of her skull. Her mind had glossed over exactly how much of her early teenaged years were spent waiting around for her pain-in-the-ass jounin teacher, probably as some sort of defense mechanism. There were some things the mind just didn't want to remember. Everyone else had gone to meet their new jounin, Ino's group being the last to go.

Still, it did give her an opportunity to covertly watch her new-old teammates. Naruto with his stupid jokes, and Sasuke with his moody slouching, and their whole silly schoolboy rivalry thing. It was all she could do not to squeal 'adorable!', latch on to them, and never let go.

_No! Bad Sakura! No abusing your teammates,_ she chided herself.

"No jounin would fall for that." Sasuke's disdainful voice prodded her out of her reverie. She really needed to stop doing that. She looked up, just in time for their new silver-haired jounin sensei to catch the chalkboard eraser in the head and prove Sasuke wrong, and for Naruto to burst into laughter as his trap worked.

She shook her head, a small grin on her face. Kakashi certainly was good enough to dodge anything they could throw at him, so it must have fallen into the 'dick around with people's heads' category that was half of everything Kakashi did.

"Maa," Kakashi drawled. "My first impression of you guys is..."

_Here it comes_, she thought happily.

"I hate you."

_Ahh, nostalgia_, she thought, her grin never faltering.

'Well, whatever. Let's go," their new jounin led them away. The rooftop where they situated themselves was just the rooftop of the Academy, which totally fit with Kakashi's lazy persona. Taking his kids to the park like Asuma did would no doubt take up valuable porn-reading or memorial-visiting time, she figured.

"Now, let's introduce ourselves," he declared, leaning back against the railing. Sakura tossed herself onto the ground next to Naruto and Sasuke, and waited with impatience as Kakashi worked through his non-answer: "I am Kakashi.. I have hobbies, but they're none of your business.. etcetera etcetera. Your turn." _Ladies and gentlemen, my jounin instructor._ They probably deserved each other. If anybody deserved to have a squirrelly, chronically-late jounin sensei like Kakashi, it would probably be their motley crew. She knew she wouldn't wish him on Hinata or Shino or Chouji.

Maybe Ino.

She then had to listen to Naruto's ode to ramen - how great cup ramen was, even if he didn't like waiting the three minutes for it to cook, how awesome Ichiraku ramen was, how he liked miso and pork best but vegetable, beef and seafood were good too - and her heart went out to Sasuke as talked about his one ambition: the death of his brother, who he would only ever refer to as _that man_. She'd never learned much about That Man, but she knew that he was responsible for the Uchiha Massacre where Sasuke's entire extended family had been murdered in one night of fire and blood, that he was a part of the Akatsuki and was at least mostly responsible for Sasuke being such a headcase, and that Sasuke did indeed slay him in the future. It hadn't exactly fixed the Avenger; if anything, he'd just gotten more irrational afterwards. When it got around to her turn, she thought about her answer for a moment.

"My name is Haruno Sakura," she introduced herself. "I like flowers, and cute things. And these two guys too." She jerked her thumb at her teammates. "But I also want to be a good ninja. In fact," some fragment of devilry made her add, "one day I'd like to be strong enough to kick your ass, Kakashi-sensei."

"Well then," Kakashi went on, looking like he had about a thousand things better to do, repeating his old speech practically word-for-word. "We have a mission tomorrow."

"What kind of mission?" Naruto practically salivated.

Kakashi's one visible eye was hard to read for the uninitiated, but she could tell their sensei was grinning under his mask. Schadenfreude, thy name is Kakashi. "Survival training."

She could just feel the malicious enjoyment dripping from his words. Naruto was hopping around in place, ecstatic. How Sasuke and Naruto planned to be ninja if they couldn't pick up on something as obvious as their teacher's malevolent grin, she didn't know.

* * *

A/N: Yes, yes, scenes we've all seen before. It'll get better, or at least I like to think so. Next chapter's going to be around twice this size.


	3. Take the reins

Sakura sat in front of the mirror, fingering a worn pair of scissors. A long-haired, pretty little girl stared back at her, a reminder of a time when it had been okay to have weaknesses, even ones as minor as long hair. A time before she'd met Team 7. But if she wanted to become strong enough to protect her - to steal a phrase from Naruto - precious people, she'd have to give up a few things. Vanities like hair would not be the worst of those. It wasn't even just that it was a vanity. She knew several kunoichi who managed to be both beautiful and deadly. But that long hair of hers was more than just hair; in her mind, it had come to represent her old uselessness. It had to go.

Without a word, she began cutting.

Her teammates, her best friends, her surrogate family. They were worth any sacrifice she could make; what was a little hair, compared to that?

Half an hour later, she left for the memorial stone, feeling more like her old self than she had since she'd undergone this weird time travelling thing. Pink tresses littered her desk, a remnant of a girl who no longer existed.

Sakura reached the meeting spot Kakashi had specified at almost the exact same time as the rest of her team. Minus the sensei, of course. She knew Kakashi wouldn't be coming for hours yet. The memorial stone was separated from the rest of Konoha by a little river. They'd agreed to meet up at the bridge, which was both conveniently near both the memorial and one of the training grounds that dotted Konoha's outlying regions. A test and an object lesson, that's how Kakashi taught. Well, that and it usually involved pain for his students.

"Morning," she called to the two boys, rubbing her eyes to try and erase her sleepiness. During the war, she'd have just popped a pill from her stash and let the chemical rush keep her awake - it was more important to be awake and ready just in case someone tried to kill you - but as she was reminding herself, she wasn't in the middle of a war anymore. Naruto made some sort of mumbled reply, still mostly asleep, and Sasuke just gave them both an unamused look.

_It's the pink backpack, I bet,_ she thought to herself. She still liked pink, but at age twelve she had been absolutely mad about the color.

She settled onto the cheerful bright red railing of the bridge and began kicking her feet for lack of anything better to do.

She'd become a bit of a Sasuke-expert, considering she'd been around him day in and day out for several years, and she was getting back into the hang of it. The look he wore now was a combination of condescension (they're going to hold me back) and annoyance (why didn't I eat breakfast this morning?). Which was not, of course, to be confused with his disdainful, irritable, scornful, derisive, or disregarding expressions. She'd once, in a fit of crush-induced insanity, catologued all his various facial expressions. Charts and graphs had been involved. The grand total had ended up at 17 versions of a contemptuous glower, three different kinds of disdainful smirks, and precisely one genuinely amused half-smile.

Thoughts in this vein amused her for almost half an hour. She checked her watch - pink of course - and sighed. 5:45 am. And if she remembered correctly, Kakashi-sensei wouldn't show up until 9 am. She flopped onto the ground with a huff. She was more patient than Naruto, but not by much.

"So... what kind of 'survival training' are we looking at, do you think? If it has such a high failure rate, it's probably not just accuracy tests," she prodded. Might as well get them talking and, more importantly, thinking.

Sasuke shrugged but said nothing. Naruto was asleep sitting up, if that nose-bubble was an indication. Sakura took that as a challenge. They were going to participate and be a team if it _killed_ them. "Sasuke-kun," she cooed in a syrupy voice, and could actually _see_ him cringe. She could see now why Kakashi-sensei enjoyed baiting them so much: they were just so _easy_. "After this is over... would you want to go on a date with me?"

He opened his mouth to start his usual 'You're annoying me by existing, leave me alone' Avenger speech, when she added in a more serious tone, "How about this, Sasuke. We could stand to learn about each of our capabilities in a fight, if we expect to pass whatever Kakashi-sensei has cooked up for us. If I can beat you in a fight, I expect you to both accept my help if it is offered, _and_ we'll be talking about that date, later. You too, Naruto."

"Uwah?" Naruto mumbled blearily. Sakura ignored him for the moment and went on. "And if you, mister Number-One Rookie, beat me, not only will I follow your lead, I will never bother you for a date again. Hell, I'll run interference for you with the other girls, how's that?" She knew that sweetening the pot like that would make it almost irresistible to the Uchiha. A chance to both show his superiority and not have to deal with one of his legions of girl-fans? A good deal all around.

Naruto was just looking at them sleepily. "We're fighting," she explained. She hopped off the bridge rail she'd been perched on and wandered over to the edge of the clearing, stopping near a rather large tree. She reached into her pouch and pulled on a pair of black leather gloves. They were her mom's, but they would do until she got a pair of her own. Her voice took on sweet tones again as she called back at them, "Don't go too hard on me, please, Sasuke-kun?"

He sneered, but gave a sharp nod and he and Naruto followed her. "Woah, woah, woah," Naruto said, waving his hands. It looked like he was finally awake. "I don't want to fight Sakura-chan."

And that, in its way, was as painful as Sasuke ignoring her. The idea that she needed to be protected because she was a girl, and 'Sakura-chan'. She knew that was just how Naruto was - he would protect his 'precious people' to his dying breath, never mind what they had to say about it - but it still bothered her. Besides, if she'd been Kiba, or Chouji, he never would've had a problem with it. Chivalry was fine in its place, but ninja battles were not one of them. Well, she'd clear up that attitude right away.

She closed her eyes for a moment, feeling her rather weak amount of chakra flowing through her body. It was embarrassing, how shallow her chakra reserves were. She'd improved by leaps and bounds over the next half-decade, though she'd never be a chakra powerhouse like Naruto or even Sasuke. This was just… sad.

With painstaking care, she rerouted some of the flow to flood her arm muscles, flesh and bone and cartilege strengthened beyond human limits, far stronger than steel. For with knowledge and chakra, all things were possible. It was her own take on her teacher Tsunade's technique, Gouwan or 'Strong Arm', and would - for a time - allow her to keep up with anything two genin might throw at her.

She held up a faintly glowing blue fist, and when she was sure she had both of their attention, slammed it into the nearby tree trunk, causing it to explode satisfactorily in a shower of splinters no bigger than a handspan long. She had the feeling her answering grin at their bug-eyed expressions was rather bloodthirsty. "Don't worry boys, I'll go easy on you."

Then she was charging in, not bothering with an fancy tactics. She zeroed in on Sasuke, deciding to give Naruto a minute to get over his surprise. She ducked low when Sasuke delivered a pair of punches to where she had been, bumping his right fist upwards with her left hand before it could retract, leaving her right hand rocketing towards his unguarded stomach. Sasuke threw himself aside and tightened his guard.

Everyone gets a freebie, she thought cheerily. He'd be taking her more seriously now, hopefully. His Academy taijutsu technique was all but perfect, but there was something else there too, maybe something he'd stolen or - but no, he didn't have the Sharingan yet, did he? A family style, maybe. By the time she'd been good enough to notice, he'd already absorbed Rock Lee's techniques into his style and used them almost exclusively.

Her next rush was much the same. He lashed out with a kick at her legs which caused her to hop over, her momentum pushing her almost against him, allowing him to easily throw her. She turned the throw into a tuck and roll - her body had the flexibility but not enough strength in her for something fancy like a flip or one-armed handstand - and leaped back to the attack with a spinning backfist.

Her dodged the backfist and her follow-up punch he trapped between elbow and side, then caught her with a flying knee to the chest. It staggered her a step and he did this complicated flip into a downward axe kick that looked real impressive and had a lot of reach and momentum behind it but wasn't actually a great idea in a fight. She'd show him why.

She planted her feet and lunged upward to meet him, taking the kick on her shoulder instead of her head. Pain raced like fire through her nerve endings, but it hadn't broken anything and, after all, it was just pain. So he was stuck in the unenviable position of being off-balance on one leg with his other leg pressed against her shoulder. Her left arm snaked around his leg and her right fisted in his shirt. A little Gouwan, a spin and he was sent flying in a wide upward arc, almost as tall as the trees and twenty feet across the clearing, arms and legs pinwheeling through the sky. She wondered if he realized she could have slammed him into the ground with all that force, breaking his bones. Judging by his furious grimace - at himself, at her - he did realize it.

Briefly ignoring the Uchiha, she turned to Naruto, who was looking decidedly nervous.

* * *

Not ten minutes later, the area was pockmarked with craters and burnt patches, and all three combatants were breathing heavily. She was using the Strong Arm technique sparingly - she didn't want to break her playmates if she accidentally hit them at full strength - but she formed the twist of will and chakra that activated the technique often whenever one of her misses came in contact with other surfaces, tearing huge gouges in the earth and blowing away trees. Gouwan was a thing of beauty: it cost her less chakra than a simple fire ninjutsu, could be activated without seals, and produced fantastic results. And all it required was an exacting control of chakra circulation and the proper know-how. The only downside was that with her pitifully small chakra reserves, even that small drain was wearing her down.

Sasuke was, as she'd expected, amazing for a 12-year-old. Both his physical conditioning and his chakra reserves were top-notch. And Naruto was obviously some kind of monster, because once he'd gotten down to actually fighting he'd been using his shadow clones the entire fight and he was still grinning and bouncing around. If she'd tried that, she'd probably be dead or in a coma from chakra exhaustion. She had to work with what she had, and what she had was... not much at the moment, besides Gouwan, her own fists and the Academy Three, the _bunshin_, _henge _and _kawarimi_ replacement techniques.

Her technique made her strong enough to shatter rock, but not any faster than she'd been before. Her speed was still that of a below-average new genin. The two boys just had to dodge and outlast her, which was a pretty easy thing considering the rather pitiful state of her physical conditioning. Two hours a day just wasn't going to cut it anymore. She'd need to adopt a new training regimen first thing.

Intellectually, she knew far more taijutsu than either boy at this point in time. But it would take time for her to ingrain her muscles with that knowledge, to make it instinct again.

Still, she'd apparently impressed them, if Naruto's goggle-eyed stare was any indication.

"Man, Sakura-chan," Naruto said, wide-eyed. "Since when could you do that stuff?" Sasuke grunted agreement. She smiled mysteriously, even as her brain panicked trying to come up with an explanation. And she was supposed to be the smart one? She certainly hadn't been thinking ahead much today.

"Ancient Haruno family secret," she lied through her teeth. The Harunos were a small family, and had only ever counted a few ninja among their ancestors, and if any of them had any special techniques, they never passed any down. Which was a shame; getting a doujutsu or bloodline limit would have helped her ninja career immensely, as opposed to pink hair, which just made her stand out on the battlefield like waving a red flag.

She waved a hand to get their attention and got out of her ready stance. "I don't have the chakra reserves to go any further," she explained. "Plus, it's probably not a good idea to exhaust ourselves before whatever Kakashi-sensei has planned." With a huff that blew pink bangs out of her eyes, she flopped onto the ground in an unlady-like slump. It was kind of depressing that all her knowledge of chakra and the workings of the body could barely keep her even with that pair's natural ability. It was amazing, really. It wasn't that she was bad, she assured herself, it's that they were a pair of _freaks_.

And with a puff of smoke, their new sensei arrived. She blinked, checked her watch, and saw that it wasn't even 6:30 yet: over two hours until he was supposed to arrive. "Kakashi-sensei, you bastard," she groaned. "You were watching us the whole time." And he'd just chosen to show himself when they were already worn out, the sadistic man. It was one of his good points - when applied to people who weren't her.

Their teacher's one visible eye was curled up into a crescent, indicating his amusement. "Correct. Now, let's get on with the test."

She groaned and got back to her feet, glaring at Sasuke and Naruto who were, if not in perfect condition, at least not as out of breath as she was. She only listened with half an ear to Kakashi-sensei's instructions. This would be her third time taking the test, after all; she'd heard it all before. Instead, she was trying to formulate a plan. Unfortunately, even if she was smart and had a nearly eidetic memory, she still wasn't the tactical brain Shikamaru was. She wasn't even as good as Naruto, who could come up with bizarre plans on the fly that somehow ended up working against all common sense. Tsunade-sensei had once told her she thought too much to be a good tactician, which didn't make any sense to her, but maybe that was why Tsunade was the legendary ninja and she wasn't.

Not that she thought any plan would enable them to win this one. Kakashi-sensei was one of those once-in-a-generation geniuses, and they were so physically outmatched it wasn't funny. Well... maybe a _little_ funny, looking back on the Thousand Years of Pain technique...

"Aaand _start!_" Her attention snapped back to the matter at hand, and they bolted for cover. Well, Sasuke and she did. Naruto, on the other hand...

Sakura resigned herself to settling down and watching Kakashi make a fool of the blond again.

Kakashi wasn't even pretending to take the kid seriously, reading porn in the middle of their fight. Naruto was all over the place, but his technique was sloppy - more like a brawler than a ninja - and he just wasn't fast enough to make the jounin take him seriously. Having shadow clones hidden in the water had been a good trick, and they coordinated as only one mind with eight bodies could. Or more exactly, eight minds that thought exactly alike. Like a school of fish - screaming, orange fish - in the sea. Of course, they were all as strupid as Naruto, which was how Kakashi could trick the clones into fighting each other with a quick switch.

The Narutos just thought he'd illusioned himself into looking like one of them.

She shouted, "Kawarimi, not henge, idiot!" She couldn't help herself, that much stupid was almost physically painful - for her. For Naruto, it actually was physically painful.

Then she decided to find a new hiding spot, knowing she'd given herself away.

When Kakashi progressed to using his stupid so-called ultimate taijutsu technique, the Thousand Years of Pain - jamming his index fingers into Naruto's butt and sending him flying through the air - she had to laugh. Say what you want about their sensei - and you could say a lot, at great length, and none of it good - he was certainly unique.

_Now what happened after he beat Naruto?_ she tried to remember, feeling just a little safe in her new hiding spot in the shadow of one of the trees. This test had been years ago, subjectively, and she'd honestly tried to forget it because they'd sucked so badly.

The whizzing sound of thrown shuriken reminded her, as Sasuke gave away his position with an attack, although knowing how good their new sensei was, the man had almost certainly already known exactly where they were. She ducked around the tree and took off running. _Now I remember. The bastard went after _me_!_

"Sakura. Behind you."

She knew she shouldn't, but she instinctively spun around, just in time to catch Kakashi's damn genjutsu head-on. _Again_.

She was in a shaded clearing. Her eyes darted back and forth, trying to pierce the illusion, but there was no chink in Kakashi's spell to exploit. Or at least none that she could see. Either the sharingan amplified such abilities or - more likely - it was another example of how far she had to go if she ever wanted to catch up to him. She tried anyway. "Kai!" she barked, her hands forming the one-seal genjutsu-breaking technique. Her will was strong, and her determination great. And yet, all that will and determination was rebuffed like a swatted fly. Even using a D-rank genjutsu, Kakashi was just too good.

She tried again. "Kai!" Again, it was like trying to dig through a sturdy wall with a spoon.

"Sakura..." the whisper drifted to her. Sasuke stood there, sagging against a nearby tree, his body pierced with innumerable kunai. Her mind was instantly wiped clear of everything but that horrible vision. She felt a scream building in her, and didn't waste time trying to bite it back. She covered the distance between them in one chakra-enhanced leap, and gripped Sasuke around the shoulders to steady him. She tried to call up chakra, but there wasn't _enough_ of it - this weak body didn't have enough to heal a damn papercut, never mind the grievous bloody rents and wounds - she couldn't even take the kunai out, or the bleeding would just get worse and hasten his imminent death. She couldn't do _anything_. Worthless. All she could do was curl up around him, careful to mind the kunai, and cry like a weak little girl.

Her worst nightmares, the ones Kakashi's Hell Viewing genjutsu technique preyed on, hadn't really changed all that much from when she was a child.

"Hm," a voice said clinically. "Perhaps I overdid it."

* * *

She came back to her senses to find herself slumped against a tree, tear tracks still drying on her face. She could remember the illusion vividly, every detail still clear in her mind, but it no longer had power over her. _Kakashi, you bastard, you complete and utter bastard,_ she chanted to herself.

She forced herself to her feet when all she really wanted to do was wallow in guilt and hurt. "Oh no," she hissed. Far better to get mad than to dwell on past sorrows. "We're not going to just bend over for you this time, sensei, not if I have to personally _beat_ cooperation into those two. We're going to get those little bells and I am going to jam them down your stupid, mask-covered throat!"

It took her less than half a minute to stomp into the clearing where Naruto was still hanging by one leg. She stood underneath him and glared up at him, displacing a little Kakashi-directed anger onto the convenient target.

"Hey Sakura-chan! Get me down!" he called. She drew a kunai and, without a word, leaped up, bounced off the trunk of the tree, and sliced through the rope.

Naruto hit the ground in a tangle of limbs, with all the grace of a sleek jungle cat. One that had all of his legs amputated. Sakura didn't bother to wait for him to pick himself up, just grabbed the sliced rope and dragged him away, the blond moaning and whining all the way.

"Suck it up, Naruto," she growled. "We're going to go find Sasuke-kun, and then we're going to find a way to get those bells."

"But Sakura-chaaaan..."

"Shut up!"

"At least let me - "

"Shut up, shut up, shut up!"

Naruto pouted.

It didn't take too long to find Sasuke, and it almost banished even Sakura's bad mood to see the prickly genius neck-deep in solid rock. Naruto, of course, began laughing like a hyena, despite his own rather embarrassing pradicament. Sakura stared at the stuck Uchiha - who was now shouting imprecations at Naruto - for a few moments in silence, before nodding decisively. She'd never seen the result of this particular ninjutsu, but it seemed simple enough, some kind of variant on the 'earth like water' Dotons.

It was a favorite trick of Kakashi's, to slip into the earth and emerge somewhere else for a sneak attack.

She stepped in front of Sasuke, feet shoulder-width apart, and focused chakra into her hands. The shouting died away, and if she didn't know better, she'd think Sasuke was embarrassed, in his own brooding Dark Avenger way. _What is he... crap, his vantage point is looking _right_ up my skirt, isn't he._ Sure, her spandex shorts covered everything adequately, but it was the principle of the thing!

Ignoring the affront to her modesty for now, she stiffened her fingers into the shape of blades - or maybe trowels, considering the activity they were being applied to - and stabbed them into the dirt in front of his face with enough force that they buried themselves elbow deep in the dirt. And now her slight boobs were right in front of his eyes. Gods, she couldn't win. Still, after that it was a simple matter of grasping Sasuke's body and dragging him bodily out of his prison.

Sasuke, once free, shook her hands off and looked away, already brooding over his inadequacies, though whether it was being saved by a girl or by Naruto - who was now cracking jokes about Princess Sasuke needing to be rescued - she didn't know. Probably both. Sasuke was multi-talented that way.

She shook her head impatiently. "Look, you two... _boys_..." it was the best insult she could think of at the moment, "need to just get over whatever this is so we can get those bells. We're obviously not going to be able to do it by ourselves -"

"Speak for yourself," Sasuke said, aloof once again. "I almost had them last time."

"And you ended up buried up to your neck in rock!" she stabbed a finger at him like the point of a blade. "We are going to work together on this, or Sakura-chan is going to get _ANGRY_."

"I think Sakura-chan is _already_ angry," Naruto muttered quietly.

_"What was that, _Naruto?"

"Nothing, Sakura-chan!" His brow furrowed, "But, but, what about the bells? There's only two."

Sakura wasn't sure, but had she had this much trouble holding onto her temper as a kid? She didn't think so. "I don't really care about the bells anymore. I'd go back to the Academy for another year and _like it_," Not really, but they didn't have to know that, "- just as long as I get to stick those bells up Kakashi-sensei's - well, let's just say it's not a good place to have little bells there," she finished feelingly, still simmering over that genjutsu. Naruto blinked, intimidated by the rather unusual threat.

"Whoa," he breathed, impressed.

Sasuke hadn't left yet, at least, which for him was as close to agreement as they'd get. "So, I had this plan..." she explained.

* * *

They found Kakashi standing there reading his orange book in the same clearing where the test had started, looking completely at peace. Until a blond shouting a battlecry shattered the morning stillness.

"Naruto!" Sakura's voice snapped as the boy charged right into the clearing, "That was _not_ part of the plan!"

Kakashi made a tsk'ing sound deep in his throat as Naruto leaped at him, bare-handed. "Apparently, I'm stuck with some slow learners this year," the jounin said amiably. Shortly thereafter, Naruto's arms were trapped behind his back and weight pressing against the back of his knees kept him on the ground.

"Gosh, Kakashi-sensei," Naruto said, grinning. "You got me."

Kakashi frowned and loosened his grip on the boy, prepared to leap away. Ninja were trained to notice minute peculiarities. Kakashi had made it his motto: to look "underneath the underneath." And his instincts were telling him that something about Naruto's mannerisms were a bit... off. Even so, he didn't expect Naruto to break his grip easily - displaying a strength the Kyuubi-vessel simply _didn't have_ - and to latch onto him in turn, grinning up at him with a manic light in his eyes. A precursory pull indicated that the boy had sealed his feet to the ground with chakra, a move that - although easy - was still a solidly genin-level technique.

In the single moment that his surprise dominated, the ground at their feet erupted, and another Naruto lunged at the softly-jingling bells. It was only a desperate jerk of Kakashi's hips that kept the bells out of the boy's possession. Finally overcoming his surprise at his genin's surprisingly sound tactics, he drew on his chakra and vanished in a puff of smoke, using Kawarimi to replace himself with one of the three logs - into the path of a wide-spread fire ninjutsu, the area surrounding the three logs burning in a hellish fireball.

Still, even such a tactic was useless in the face of overwhleming speed. Even as the smug Uchiha completed his technique, an elbow buried itself in the top of his head, dropping Sasuke to the ground. The two Narutos charged toward him, one losing its Henge to reveal Sakura as he'd begun to suspect, Kakashi held up a hand to signal an end to the exercise.

The charging genin slowed, then came to a stop. "Kakashi-sensei, what...?" Naruto asked as Sasuke picked himself up off the ground, directing a dirty look at all three equally.

"First," Kakashi wanted to know, "what made you decide to work together to get the bells?"

It was Sasuke who answered. "We decided we'd figure out what we'd do with the bells _after_ we'd gotten them away from you."

Kakashi closed his visible eye, and took in a deep breath that sounded like a sigh. And then he began to laugh. "Well done," he said simply, when he'd mastered himself again.

"Teamwork," he told them. "The bell test was created by my sensei to test the level of teamwork between the members of a genin cell: the test was never about actually _taking_ the bells from me. For all we prize individual skills, genin are placed into teams, so that your team can cover your weaknesses, and you may guard their shortcomings in turn. There is strength in numbers, in teamwork, in trust. You each trusted each other to pull off your parts of a concerted tactic, and you did it well."

"We are told those ninja who break the rules are trash," he went on, his voice taking on the tone of mantra. This was Kakashi's personal _nindo_, the one central truth a ninja had decided to live by. "But ninja who forsake their teammates are _worse_ than trash."

"You have proven you have what it takes. You pass."

"All _right!_" Naruto shrieked in glee, and even Sasuke was grinning. Sakura muttered something that sounded like a fond, "Devious bastard," but she was smiling as well.

Naruto looked towards where they had left their bento, ready for a celebratory lunch. Only to see the charred remains of all three boxes at the foot of the logs. "Sasuke, you bastard! _My lunch!_" he howled in anguish.

* * *

A/N: There'll be a detour or two before we get to the Wave Country arc. Solo-Sakura stuff, mostly.


	4. Elephant in the room

Naruto was still whining about his lunch when Kakashi showed them the cenotaph.

"I wanted you to work together; lone heroics have no place in our society. This memorial stone holds the names of our true heroes, who have given their lives to protecting us. Do not be so quick to be a hero, because to be a ninja hero is to die in Konoha's service," he told them.

"The names of my closest friends are engraved here."

Well. Not much they could say to that.

Kakashi dismissed them, telling them to report back tomorrow for their first assignment.

Naruto and Sasuke had gone on ahead, Naruto talking Sasuke's ear off about celebratory ramen. Sakura decided she'd rather just head home for a quiet celebration. They had worked together and proven themselves to Kakashi, and that was a good day's work, in her mind.

Also, figure out what she was going to tell her mom about her new haircut. Haruno Hana was still a little uncomfortable with having a barely pubescent ninja daughter, and had liked the idea of her growing her hair long to impress boys. It had been a pretty normal, girly thing to do.

She was only a few blocks away from the training area when she felt a modest killing intent appear at her back, with the suddenness that could only be a high-speed shunshin. She reacted like a woman who had been through a war, off and on the front lines. Her muscle might not remember, but her chakra senses seemed to, and they got her body moving with practically no input from her.

She was halfway through a deadly three-part move before she recalled that this was peaceful Konoha, not a mission and not a battlefield.

The mule kick, supplemented as it was by her Strong Arm technique, would have shattered not only her attacker's knee but most of the bones in his leg, and her follow-up spinning backhand and downward chop would have crushed his skull.

Rather than doing either of those things, Kakashi proved his title of 'elite jounin' wasn't for show. His leg snaked around hers at the knee and locked it at full extension. To avoid her fist he came in low and wrapped his arm around her from hip to shoulder, her own fist forced almost straight upwards over his own shoulder. The result was an oddly intimate-looking embrace that nullified her ability to do much of anything effectively.

She was honestly impressed. Sure, she could break free if she burned through some more chakra, but now that she was thinking and not just reacting she didn't actually want to murder her sensei. That would have been awkward. But she was reminded again that Kakashi was pretty much the top of the line as far as Konoha jounin went. He'd figured out the way the technique worked down to the smallest weaknesses just from spying on her for a few minutes as she fought Naruto and Sasuke. The way she usually used the technique was that she only focused her chakra strength at the point of kinetic impact. It was like holding a bomb in her hand. Or her foot. Or elbow. Or… well, she could probably do a pretty righteous head butt, if she tried.

It was less chakra-intensive to narrow the Strong Arm down to a single point; the technique needed her to hit something to impart the crushing payload anyway, so why would she waste what little chakra she had empowering her whole body, unless she needed it for heavy lifting or the like? But then she'd run into a canny enough guy who figured it out, like Kakashi had.

But then, considering Kakashi had known Jiraiya, perhaps he'd had the opportunity to study Tsunade in the field as well.

_Need more chakra to throw around_, she reminded herself. Then she could afford to be less sparing with her Strong Arm technique, maybe supplement her Tsunade-granted skills with a few of the ninjutsu she'd picked up over the years but didn't really use much. A lot of areas needed improvement, but muscle memory and chakra reserves above all.

"We need to have a talk, Sakura," Kakashi told her, bringing her mind back to her awkward predicament. And for all that it seemed genuine and friendly, she could feel that he was as immovable as the iron roots of Konoha trees.

"And by talk," he added helpfully, visible eye narrow. "I mean 'you talk.'"

Her mind raced. Team 7 were actually, as a whole, pretty poor liars (their capacity for self-delusion was high but that wasn't quite the same thing).

Obviously in retrospect, the technique had been suspicious; he probably recognized that there were less than ten ninja in the world with a strengthening technique like it, if that many. She'd known this had been a possibility when she'd decided that the quickest way to earn respect from her boys had been to show them what she could do. She just hadn't expected Kakashi to confront her on her first day! Obviously, Naruto wasn't the only one on Team 7 that had all the guile and skills at subterfuge of a wingless fruit fly.

And what, Kakashi couldn't have just secretly stalked her for a while, he had to come right out and confront her? Where was _his_ ninja training?

So he'd set up a little test. Kakashi did like his tests. The element of surprise and some mild killing intent, nothing a genin with her supposed lack of experience would even notice. If she hadn't, he could just play it off like he'd forgotten to tell her something at the training ground. But she hadn't responded like a newly-promoted genin. She'd reacted like a ninja just coming off the front lines, still twitchy and paranoid because that was what kept ninja on the front lines alive.

Crap. Sakura really, really didn't want to be given to Ibiki as a suspected plant.

But... she didn't really want to keep this from Kakashi, anyway. He was squirrelly and chronically late and drove her nuts with his reading material, but he was clever and he'd come through for them, time and again. Or he would, anyway. She'd trusted him enough to help her and Naruto work out the fiendishly complex seals needed for their crazy little idea. Perhaps she should trust him again. She took a deep breath, and made her decision.

"Is there somewhere we can talk in private? This is going to get a bit... complicated."

* * *

On the short walk to wherever he was leading her, her mind was working furiously on how and what to tell him. She'd have to come clean, probably. She was so absorbed that she nearly slammed into his back before realizing that he'd stopped in at a restaurant she'd never been in before.

It was a classy place, not the sort of place she was used to. The walls were all in muted, comfortable colors - greens and grays and off-white creams - broken up by occasional paintings of calming landscapes. It presented a relaxing atmosphere. A woman with long black hair behind the counter greeted Kakashi with a wide smile. "The usual, Kakashi-san?"

"Not this time, Tsubame-chan," the masked ninja said breezily, as if he didn't have a care in the world. "Just bring out some snacks, sake... tea for her."

The woman's attitude reminded Sakura of Ayame, whenever the team visited Naruto's Ichiraku ramen stand, if a bit less obvious in her interest. She was smitten. By Kakashi. Who knew their sensei was such a heartthrob?

Creepy.

She evaluated him thoughtfully. He was tall and lean, and could probably manage mysterious if they'd never seen him with his orange book. But he was just such a _weirdo_.

They slid into a booth near the back, and at least a few seats away from any of the other sparse patrons, and Kakashi looked at her expectantly.

"Okay." She took a deep breath, and let it out slowly. "I should have said this before, but… are you sure about this place, Kakashi-sensei? This is kind of… private. Classified-private." That probably hadn't made a lot of sense, grammatically-speaking, but Kakashi picked up on her worry without trouble.

He tapped the tabletop, and she saw that the smooth wooden finish had markings lightly traced on it. Seals. What of, she didn't know; she knew a lot of the medical ones, but there were so many different branches and sub-types within the fuuinjutsu discipline… now that she was looking, she saw the same carved seals gracing the booth seats themselves.

"Tsubame-chan's aunt is a retired ninja," Kakashi mentioned offhandedly. "She opened this place to give off-duty ninja a place to relax; the seals are for privacy and there are also ones for defensive purposes."

She licked dry lips. "So. The technique is what set you off, I assume?"

"You are also cannier than I would have expected in a kunoichi who made top of the class only on the strength of her written exam." In other words, a kunoichi who was so incredibly immersed in books that she was going to be a dead weight to her team in any physical confrontation, she translated. Sasuke wasn't the only one on Team 7 that could be kind of a dick at times, and Kakashi didn't often spare people's feelings when he had a point to make.

She said quietly, "I was taught that technique and others by Sanju Tsunade of the Sannin. I was her apprentice for three years, and then a junior colleague of hers for two more."

Kakashi's non-expression suggested she elaborate. Kakashi only really had two modes; amusement at the expense of others, and the thousand-yard stare he was giving her now.

On the way here she'd considered pretending to be a plant sent to watch the Last Uchiha and Naruto, like Sai had been. Like from ROOT, or something. But she just didn't think he would buy it. Sai and those like him had never gone to the Academy; Danzo would never let his closest pawns out from under his thumb so.

"You think it's impossible that could have happened, right? That you would have been told? Because after all, aren't we the nice ninja village, the one that doesn't send our own out on suicide missions, the one that doesn't lie to our ninja or have secret agendas?" Her tone was gently mocking, but sad, too.

Everything she'd ever heard of the Third Hokage had said that he had been glad to become a man of peace following the Second and Third Great Ninja Wars. But she had been the student of two Hokages, as Sarutobi had. She knew that she did not know all that went on behind the scenes, not even close, but what she did know was enough to chill the blood and make anyone cynical about politics. Blood for money, blood for power, that had ever been the way of the ninja world. Konoha might have been the best of them, but they were still ninja.

She got back on track. "But never mind. Ultimately, there were only two people responsible for what I've become. Myself… and you."

She wondered idly if the Sharingan granted its users some kind of doujutsu staring power even when unactivated. Sasuke's glare could scare off men twice his size, and that was nothing to Kakashi's evil eye, which might actually be trying to burn a hole through her head. She was starting to squirm in her seat, her body trying to edge away from that heat.

Answers, that eye demanded. Now.

Enough prevaricating, she agreed. She took the plunge. "Kakashi-sensei, what do you know about Raito's Theory of 'Mass Displacement As Applicable to Temporal Jutsu'?" she rattled off, citing one of the premier seal experts of the last hundred years, a Kumo ninja said to be equal to Konoha's Sannin in his day.

"I'm familiar," he said cautiously. He should be, he was the one who had painstakingly explained it to her, in another life. "He found that nothing with as much mass as a human body could be transported through time without horrendous cost. So much so that it was deemed useless, and further research scrapped. The most Raito himself could ever manage was jumps of only a few seconds forwards or backwards in time."

She ignored him and went on briskly, deciding to get it over with by skipping to the important part. "So, story-time. Once upon a time there was this kid, who was a little messed up in the head, but a pretty good kid all the same. Lots of issues, a real prickly bastard, actually, but he cared more than he let on and he could be kind in his way. And he had a genin team, who loved him even though he was an idiot who brooded too much. And he was just starting to open up to his team and relax and... and everything was going to be okay. Then his psychotic big brother showed up and fucked with his head, and this... this snake bastard -" to use Naruto's word for him, "bit him and infected him with, I don't know, this seal that made him even crazier, and he went on a power trip and left Konoha for a murderous, body-stealing bastard of a missing-nin."

She went on, her words picking up speed and starting to jumble together as she remembered the whole mess. "And so he spent three years with that.. that snake, who was planning to possess him because he was, you know, crazy, and then he somehow absorbed Orochimaru instead and got a new team together, like his old team didn't even _matter_, but a few years down the road Orochimaru got back enough identity to take him over from the inside so he had all that stupid boy's power, and all his own power, and the sharingan, and we couldn't do a _fucking thing_ to stop him." She didn't need to fill in the blanks for Kakashi on why that would be a bad thing; Orochimaru with access to arguably the most powerful doujutsu ever created was a terrifying thought.

Sakura took a shaky breath and clamped down on her emotions, got herself back under control. "And that is how Sasuke is going to turn out five years down the road." She looked at her sensei, who's eyebrow was cocked almost to his hairline in what was either surprise or disbelief.

"So Konoha was in trouble because we had an immortal genius with the sharingan out for our blood - two of them, actually. There's some guy named Madara out there, who's some one-hundred-plus year old Uchiha from the founding of Konoha. And that's on top of all the other crap we were dealing with, like the rest of the Akatsuki - scary, scary people - and the other Countries getting all uppity and war-hungry. Sarutobi was long dead. Jiraiya and Tsunade - the Fifth - were dead. You were installed as the Sixth Hokage. Congratulations, I guess."

"But we were in trouble. No, that doesn't adequately describe the situation. We were _fucked_. Konoha closed ranks, Suna was doing what it could to help us out - long story - but we were getting hammered pretty badly. We were losing contracts, losing ninja. It was getting pretty close to all-out war. So we - me and you - came up with this idea to send someone back into the past and try and change things. Especially with Sasuke, or if we had to, kill him before he could desert Konoha because as much as I love the stupid ass, he's not worth all the destruction and heartbreak. And it worked because - for some reason _neither_ of you would explain to me - Naruto is some kind of human chakra battery and has more chakra reserves than a dozen adult ninja. We decided to send me because Naruto couldn't come because he was the locus, and you - the future you - decided that I would have a better chance than he would, for whatever reason."

She peeked at him. Kakashi's face was utterly, perfectly blank. It wasn't just the mask; his usually expressive eye had shut down completely, giving her nothing. She probably sounded like a raving loony. Time for the trump card her Kakashi had given her, in case this situation came up. "Kakashi - my Kakashi, I guess - warned me that you might not believe me. So he said that if I needed to convince you, to tell you that Obito's eye tears up whenever you look at the cenotaph. And that," she cleared her throat, somewhat embarrassed by what she was about to say, "we were good for you. Like Rin and Obito and Minato were."

Kakashi continued to stare at her. His eye looked a little glassy and generally not-there. Finally, he murmured, "I'm going to have to apologize to Tsubame-chan." He left his seat and wrapped an arm around her. "We need to discuss this with the Hokage."

A whirling cloud of leaves appeared from nowhere and washed over them, and the world fell apart. An instant later, Sakura blinked the glare of the setting sun out of her eyes enough to see that they were at the Hokage's tower. She'd never actually gotten around to learning that one, so it wasn't the first time Kakashi'd had to drag her along by _shunshin_. More importantly, "Hokage-sama is still here?"

"Sarutobi works late," was the only explanation Kakashi gave before escorting her through the doors, up several flights of stairs, and through another set of doors into the Hokage's office. The few chuunin and jounin still loitering didn't even attempt to stop them.

Sarutobi was sitting at his desk, staring out the window that overlooked most of Konoha. When they came to a stop before his desk he gave them a polite, measured look behind his smoking pipe, silently asking them to explain their purpose.

Kakashi patted her on the shoulder and said, "One of my adorable genin has a very unusual and very interesting story to tell." He waved her on and stepped back one step, granting her center stage.

Sakura couldn't help feeling like she'd been thrown to the wolves, even if Sarutobi was a relatively benign old wolf. She licked her lips. Be quick, he succinct, she thought. Don't freak out on the Hokage. "Right. Okay, Hokage-sama. So... As I understand it - and I'm not totally convinced I do - I am the consciousness of Haruno Sakura from roughly five years in the future, subjective-time, currently occupying this body - my twelve-year-old self - thanks to a whole bunch of theoretical sealwork and a whole heap of luck."

The old man didn't even have the courtesy to seem amazed when she paused to gauge his reaction. "Please go on, Sakura-kun," was all he said.

She could feel _her_ jaw dropping. "You _believe_ me?" She had been winging it, trying to come up with all kinds of answers and counter-arguments, and it all kind of fizzled in the face of Sarutobi's calm air.

"Kakashi brought you to me, which means that he believes you. And as I have always thought Kakashi to be a rather clever young man, I am also inclined to believe you, at least provisionally." He blew a small smoke ring, which drifted lazily out the window. Just another old man out for his afternoon smoke.

"Huh." She tried to put her thoughts in order. "You have to understand that we didn't really plan this far, Hokage-sama. Most of our planning was just involved in _getting_ me here." He smiled at her, like her favorite ninja grandfather. She could feel her eyes unexpectedly welling up with tears. Tsunade-sama was a good leader and teacher, and Kakashi was… well, Kakashi, but Sarutobi had been something special. His death had shaken Konoha to its foundations.

"Start wherever you feel comfortable," he told her. "And we'll work from there."

She drew herself up straight. If nothing else were possible, her warning might possibly save this man's life. That would be more than enough to warrant all the efforts they had expended on this half-baked plan, though it wouldn't stop her from trying for more.

"Half a year from now, Konoha is going to host a chuunin exam. It is going to be... bad. Orochimaru will manipulate Sunagakure into invading Konoha, somehow, and they catch us with our pants down in the third part of the test. Full-on invasion from two villages - Sand and a new village, Sound - with giant summon back-up. Many die. More would have, but for Jiraiya returning and assisting in our defense. Much of the village infrastructure is damaged or destroyed. This is all second-hand information, though," she said. "I wasn't involved in the main battle. Gaara - the Kazekage's second son - knocked me unconscious and almost crushed me to death not long into the battle. He has a tanuki demon imprisoned inside him, if you weren't aware. Very strong, very insane. He does get better eventually, but the way he is now, he is a homicidal monster."

She ignored Sarutobi's sudden start that said he very much _hadn't _known that bit of information, and plowed on. "Sasuke-kun and Naruto stopped him. But Orochimaru was hiding in Konoha during the exam. We met him in the Forest of Death, where he was pretending to be..." she tried vainly to remember. "I don't remember, one of the invited genin. I think he wore a kasa. I could pick him out of a crowd if I had to; he was creepily memorable. He bit Sasuke and gave him one of those cursed seals. During the invasion he made this big purple barrier thing over the arena and you two fought. He killed you."

She tried to remember any pertinent events that had happened years ago - subjectively. "Jiraiya found Tsunade somewhere and got her to become the Godaime. Some of the Akatsuki came to Konoha. I don't know why. One of them was Uchiha Itachi, maybe he just came to mess with Sasuke-kun... Sasuke-kun decided to go to Orochimaru because - " her throat caught again. She should be stronger than this! " - because he's an _idiot_. And then some other stuff happened, and when Orochimaru took over Sasuke's body he pretty much became invincible. So Kakashi-sensei and I came up with this crazy idea to send me back and, and here I am." She blew out a breath feeling obscurely better, somehow.

She mused, "Naruto actually ends up being the lynchpin for most of this. He beat Gaara during the exam - more than that, he saved him from himself somehow. He's good at that. Gaara later became the Kazekage and allied with us more fully than I've ever heard of in two ninja villages the size of ours. Full trade agreements, mutual aid, defense pacts, you name it; they're really why we survived as long as we did."

"He and Jiraiya together can bring Tsunade back to us. And he can beat Pain, who is the nominal leader of the Akatsuki. He's pretty much an idiot right now, but he'll save us all more than once. In three or four years he's going to be well into S-rank territory, pretty much our strongest ninja. He really will be Hokage someday. The only one he could never beat was Sasuke-kun…" she trailed off, not wanting to get into that, and tired of talking besides.

Sarutobi leaned back in his chair, his funny-looking hat tilting forward to shade his eyes. "Kakashi-kun. Your thoughts?"

Kakashi drew himself straight, serious in a way she had so rarely seen him. "Cancelling the exam would limit Orochimaru's access, and might prevent the Suna incursion," he said. "But nothing we can do could curb a man like Orochimaru forever, and cancelling the exam would be seen as weakness by the other nations."

The Hokage nodded, deep in thought. "It would be seen as a great offense, not allowing their young ones to enter for the exam, as well as suspicious on our part. We would be seen as having something to hide. Possibly enough for them to withdraw from the non-aggression pact. I had also hoped that I would still be strong enough to stop my wayward student, if it came to that. It seems this is no longer the case. I am not the ninja I once was, I'm afraid." He smoked for a short time in silence, while Sakura looked between the two stoic ninja, feeling like a fly on the wall.

Finally, Sarutobi exhaled and said mildly, "Kakashi-kun, please inform my advisors, and Morino-kun... and what ANBU captains you think we can trust. We will discuss possible counter-measures tomorrow. I believe we will leave the information as that gained from a reliable informant who wishes her identity to remain secret." He looked at her, smiling around his pipe, his eyes kind. "I would like to extend the thanks of Konoha as a whole, as well as my personal thanks, for undertaking such a dangerous mission in order to bring us this message, Sakura-kun. No matter what we decide, your warning will have given us the opportunity to save many lives. Please make yourself available to Kakashi-kun, should we need to call on your expertise in these matters: your foreknowledge may prove invaluable in the coming months."

She found her cheeks tinting red from his gratitude. It wasn't often a young, first-generation kunoichi like herself got the personal thanks of the God of Shinobi. She murmured something incomprehensible, bowed, and left.

* * *

A/N: Cripes, Sakura is wordy in this chapter. Sorry for the expositional onslaught.

Anyway, as you might have guessed, Sakura doesn't know about Naruto's tenant in this fic, just that he's pretty abnormal. That's because I hadn't seen Orochimaru and Naruto's fight on the bridge when I was first planning this part out (this plotbunny's pretty old), and I'd already had a few scenes plotted out with that as a plot point, so hey. She won't be in the dark forever.

Also, thanks to Asuka Kureru and akeginu for reminding me that actions garner reactions. That'll come up next chapter. And I totally stole Asuka's name for Sakura's mom.


	5. Like water to a fish

Sakura slowly circled the wooden log she was taking her aggressions out on with little half-steps and wide sliding foot movements, working her way through the half-dozen Academy-taught stances. The poor thing was dented and cracking from the work she'd been putting in whenever she could find the time, spattered with blood from now-healed bloody knuckles. Of course, re-healing the muscle tears so quickly slowed down on the actual build-up of muscle mass, but being able to train past when a normal genin would have to stop and wait to heal naturally was a good trade-off. It was a net win.

Life for Sakura had settled into a comfortable rhythm over the last few days.

During the late morning and early afternoon, her team would undertake the usual rank D missions. Chores like weeding, courier missions, or catching that escape artist cat of the Fire Lady's. They were the very bottom-rung of the ladder as far as missions went, reserved for new genin like themselves and supposed to encourage teamwork. Sakura was convinced they were actually just an excuse for their jounin sensei to torture them while lounging around and reading his smutty books, and Naruto and Sasuke actually managed to hate them with more of a passion than she did.

The evenings - except for those rare days when Kakashi actually took them to one of the training grounds and taught them something - were spent in solo training like this one. A physical strength-training regimen that might have got an approving nod from the demon of hard work, Gai himself, had he known about it. Sometimes it was beating a log over and over again to get her body used to the moves through repetitive motion.

Besides beating innocent practice logs, there was running, shadow boxing until she dropped, that sort of thing. A little accuracy drilling with senbon needles and kunai just to give her something different to do, even if her style was never going to rely heavily on thrown weapons.

She'd always wanted to learn a little of the non-traditional taijutsu Gai taught, but there had just never had the time between missions and her medical training. Academy taijutsu was straightforward and not very inspired compared to some of the tricky soft-hand styles like the Hyuuga's jyuuken, or the hard kung fu styles Gai taught, but it did the job.

What she really wanted to do was pick a fight with a few of the genin hotheads. It would do wonders for her stress threshold and also help tone down her kill-or-be-killed reflexes. And if she accidentally hurt somebody while doing it, well, there were plenty of genin out there who deserved a savage beating or two.

That run-in with Kakashi had shown her that her reactions, though useful in, say, an invasion, were not right for the average genin in peaceable Konoha. But if she just started going around picking fights, she might give something away to people who shouldn't even know she existed, or even develop a reputation that could get around to Kabuto's people. It just wasn't worth the risk.

She stepped forward and delivered a lunge punch and two short jabs to her wooden foe. getting a feel for how her prepubescent body handled, how one move could flow into another. A thrust kick followed a ridge hand strike, chambered into another punch, and… her hand was bleeding again. She was either going to need to buy some leather gloves or build up some callus, because this was sad.

Still, not bad practice for the other thing she needed; chakra. She called up her chakra and massaged green healing energy into her abused knuckles. Medical chakra was a strongly ordered refinement on the regular molded chakra. Where regular chakra was molded into specific forms by hand seal mudras and produced a wide variety of effects on the world around them, medical chakra introduced order into a system to speed healing and reconstruct the body. It was like genjutsu, that way. Of course, depending on the ethics of the medic involved, once introduced into a system it could do other things, too.

Kabuto had shown her that there were many ways to use medical chakra. She had her own ideas for advancements in the field, actually, but Tsunade had beaten it into her head that testing new ideas out on her own body was a Very Bad Idea.

So she trained, and trained, and trained. The chakra exercises she was performing were those recommended by medic-nin to improve their body's control and volume of chakra. The knowledge she'd gained during her medic-nin training she still had access to, so she didn't need to go back over reattaching lizard tails and keeping fish alive out of water. All she needed was more chakra, which meant a lot of meditation and chakra exercises - - and simply using chakra to go along with her physical training. She wouldn't see any real results for some time, at least a month or two, but it felt good to be _doing_ something. So good, in fact, that she often didn't return home until late in the evening to reheat the dinner her mother conscientiously placed out every night.

Getting back into what she considered good shape was going to take some sacrifices.

If not for her healing abilities, reduced as they were, she would be one sore little genin. As it was, she traded her lack of bruises and injuries for a more general feeling of exhaustion and malaise, which she ignored with the ease of long practice. She was tired all the time, but that wouldn't kill her. She was feeling driven, like the clock was against her, and each day that slipped away was one closer to disaster. She estimated that with her increased regimen and not having to actually spend half her time studying the techniques she was using, she'd have regained her old form by the chuunin exams, or nearly so; compressing over three years of training into a single year.

But she didn't think it would be enough. She still wouldn't be a match for Orochimaru or the Akatsuki. Even Kabuto: she thought she _might_ be able to take him, if she struck from surprise, and struck to kill. 50-50 chance, maybe. Her youth and her weak physical scores in the Academy might help her, there; he wouldn't be expecting a competent, deadly attack from a thirteen-year-old girl. But the silver-haired man was Orochimaru's spymaster for a reason; he was very observant and very clever, and it would be damn hard to surprise him. And if she were honest with herself, he possessed a sort of terrible medical genius that unnerved her almost as much as Orochimaru himself.

It was driving her crazy, trying to find a solution that would get them all out of this situation alive and intact. She was dreaming about timetables and assassination plans in her sleep, these days, except when she worked herself to exhaustion.

She'd expected to be called to the Hokage's tower often. After thinking it over, she had realized she still had more information to give. Who was a spy for sure and who wasn't, at least a little info about many of the Akatsuki and jinchuuriki. But the Hokage hadn't tapped her for information yet. If she hadn't noticed an increase in ANBU activity (or thought there was, at any rate), she'd have assumed that he hadn't believed her unbelievable story and had simply been humoring a delusional child.

She also hadn't brought up the subject of dates to Sasuke since Kakashi's bell test, partly because she had very little time that wasn't involved in training of one sort or another, and partly because she knew it bugged him wondering what she was up to. She idly wondered if enjoying watching him squirm made her a bad person, but eventually decided that it was just an occupational hazard of being ninja. All the best ninja she knew were quirky at best or just plain weirdoes at worst.

It was almost a week into her new life that she felt she'd saved up enough pocket money from their D rank missions to be able to afford to put at least one thing that was gnawing at her to rest: the clothes situation. Sure, it wasn't the most important thing pressing on her mind, but it was something she could do something about.

And when one wanted to talk clothing in their age group, one went to Ino.

* * *

The Yamanaka flower shop was about as unlikely a ninja residence as she could imagine. The building itself had been painted a pale, buttery cream with the red slate roofs many in Konoha favored. Cheerful yellow carnations hung in a pot next to the open door, and various bouquets were on display in the window.

She stepped inside, a cheerful little brass bell ringing to announce her, and was hit full in the face with a blast of nostalgia. The scent of Wind country wildflowers, Konoha fireblossoms, and half a hundred other scents combined to provide a clean but riotous floral smell. Scent was the key to memory, she had heard it said. And nowhere she'd yet been, not even her parents' house, had struck so strong a chord with her than this place, where she'd spent half her life from the ages of 6 to 11.

Inside was a colorful riot of different flowers where people could mix and match to achieve whatever bouquet they might desire if they didn't want the pre-made bouquets. She wondered idly whether they grew their own or bought from suppliers. She knew the Naras had a lot of land in their name, but she didn't think the Yamanakas did.

Inoichi, Ino's dad, was manning the counter and nodded a warm hello to her as she entered. Ino was in a purple apron and wearing a pale yellow t-shirt instead of her usual purple vest, cutting the stems of a few flowers and arranging them so that they hung just right in their vase. She hadn't even looked up when she heard the bell announce the business had a new customer.

She wasn't sure why the Yamanakas had decided to go into the florist business. One could send coded messages with flowers, but the code wasn't exactly unbreakable, and ciphers did a better job of hiding information. So really, flowers had pretty much zero value to ninjas.

She resolved to never mention this theory to Inoichi. When he was wearing his paisley shop apron he was as friendly and personable a shopkeep as you could find, but he was still a semi-active jounin with an emphasis on assassination and intelligence missions. She didn't want to find out if he could get tetchy about the flower thing.

But really, watching Ino's absolute concentration at her task, she supposed she knew why the Yamanakas had been florists for at least two generations. Inoichi got like that sometimes, and he'd passed it down to his daughter. Flowers might have had no use to the ninja arts, but great use to certain ninja in particular. Ikebana, flower arranging, for the Yamanakas was an art. Like a moving meditation. Where the mind could relax and the body simply be.

Sasuke got like that sometimes with his kata, when it was just right and he could move and flow with absolute perfection. When his formidable mind could focus on what he was doing with the precision of a laser, and let himself merely exist. Outside of very rare moments with Team 7, it was only in moments like that where the idea of revenge that ruled him retreated just a little, and he could be something approaching happy.

She didn't have anything like that. The best she could liken it to was when she'd put in a too-long shift at the hospital after a battle, riding the ragged edge of chakra exhaustion. Tsunade trained well; her apprentices' bodies remembered even when their minds were as slow and dull as a blade about to break from over-use. 'Sakura' could fade away and all that was left was a medic on automatic control: diagnose the injury, hold the crumbling life together with chakra until the worst was over, and move on.

She slid up towards the back of the store, smiled at Ino's dad but made a bee-line for the oblivious girl. Inoichi obligingly laid a hand on Ino's shoulder, drawing her out of her fugue state before slipping off to grant them some privacy.

Sakura wasn't sure if it was paradoxical or expected that the Yamanakas understood the value of privacy.

"Hello!" Sakura called out cheerily.

"Forehead," the blonde girl said neutrally, still fiddling with the flowers in their vase and not looking up.

Sakura blinked. Ino wasn't the kind of girl to hesitate in expressing her opinions. At all. Swiftly it dawned on her that Ino expected Sakura had stopped by to _gloat_ about getting on Team 7.

Which she supposed she would have, at the height of their rivalry. Now, though… she didn't really want to rub salt in that wound even to secure her cover as, well, herself. Ino had loved - did love - Sasuke, in her own careless way. It was unlike her old desperate idolization, but it was real, and true. To trample on that would be the act of an uncaring - or vindictive - bitch.

"Lucky break, huh," she said finally, quietly.

"Yeah." Ino pouted to herself. And if there was a kunoichi in Konoha who had mastered the art of the pout, it was Ino. If Sakura had been confrontational, Ino could have fired back, but they were both just ending up maudlin. Ino finally bitched half-heartedly, "How did you luck out and get on Sasuke-kun's team, anyway?"

"Haven't a clue," Sakura admitted. "My skills aren't really well suited to a front-line combat team, which is what Naruto and Sasuke-kun are." Weren't well suited, anyway. She did well enough for herself, these days.

"By that logic, Hinata should have been the one to end up there," Ino agreed. Their crop of kunoichi weren't exactly beasts in hand-to-hand.

Ino glanced up to catch her eyes, then away - then did a double take, her head whipping back. "Holy crap Forehead, what happened to your head?"

Sakura ran a hand through her trimmed locks with only a little self-consciousness. Ino did still own a tiny corner of her soul, whatever happened. Somewhere deep, deep inside, there was a little 6-year-old Sakura that hung on Ino-chan's every word. The trick, Sakura had long decided, was to never let Ino _know _that.

"It's called a haircut," she said offhandedly.

"You look like a boy," Ino critiqued, leaving her flower arrangement to make a slow circle of Sakura. "What happened to looking pretty enough to land Sasuke? Think that just because you're on his team you can coast?"

"Yeah, about that… where did we hear that Sasuke liked pretty girls with long hair, anyway?"

Ino shrugged. "I don't know. Everyone knows that."

Sakura rolled her eyes. "Right, and does Sasuke seem like the kind of boy to shout his preferences from the rooftops? You _know_ he isn't, Ino."

She knew that expression on Ino's face. It was the look she got when she realized Sakura was right and she wasn't, but didn't want to admit it. Sakura treasured that look.

"So it turns out Sasuke doesn't really like pretty girls." Sakura shook her head mock-sadly. "Sorry, Ino. You're just way prettier than me."

Ino opened her mouth, paused, and closed it again. Ino just wasn't going to adopt the position that she wasn't, in fact, pretty, even to win an argument with Sakura.

She brightened mock-thoughtfully. "But don't worry too much, Ino! You still have Shika and Chouji."

Ino didn't rise to the bait, looking at her with a strange expression on her face. "I know he's cute, Forehead, but you loved your hair."

It took her a few moments to realize Ino was actually worried for her. "It's fine, Ino-pig. I needed to do it."

Ino was still frowning. "Did your jounin-sensei-"

"Nothing like that. Kakashi just showed me I wasn't as accomplished a ninja as I thought I was." Which was close enough to be accurate, if not the entire truth. Her promotion to genin the first time had thrown her into the deep end of ninja battles and ninja politics, and she had floundered for a long time. "Sasuke doesn't want a girlfriend right now. He wants strength. I need to be strong for him, and I need to be strong for myself. Pretty can come later."

"Actually," Sakura said, recalling her original purpose in coming here, "I was going to look into buying some more serious ninja gear, and you've got a great eye for color, even if you do think those bandages look good as a fashion statement. Care to come with?"

They hadn't gone shopping together in years, and if things had gone the way they had before, they wouldn't for years yet. But she'd decided she would rather have her friend back. With Naruto and Sasuke being how they were, she didn't need an Eternal Rival of her own, there was enough testosterone flying around without her trying to add to it.

Ino's lips quirked in apology. "Sorry, Forehead-chan. Dad's going out drinking with his old ninja buddies again, so I've got to watch the shop. Rain-check? Or you could come back with your purchases and I'll explain why your sense of style sucks." That was a peace-offering, Ino-style. Maybe Ino wanted her friend back, too.

Well, that was that. This visit was still going better than she'd expected. She'd take what she could get.

"Well then, I need to head out. I'll see you later, Pig-chan." She paused before leaving, glancing back at the other kunoichi. She looked at Ino and suspected her eyes were old for her too-young face. "It's a dangerous, deadly world out there, Ino. If I don't want to be liability, I have to be just as deadly. We're ninja; we don't get to be children anymore."

She left, leaving the Yamanaka heir looking a little thoughtful. Ino would grow into a competent chuunin with an information/assassination bent. She had the talent to go far and wasn't afraid of hard work. But Sakura hadn't been the only one unprepared for the chuunin exam's vicious ruthlessness.

* * *

Sakura felt a certain girlish glee at seeing all the store windows lined up, each competing in degrees of color and gaudiness. It seemed like ages since she'd last gone shopping.

She'd been disappointed that Ino hadn't been able to join her on this excursion but also a bit relieved. Ino had a better sense of fashion and style than she did, but she could be really insistent. Sakura would probably have gone home that night in either bandages or mesh. She could freely admit that sort of thing looked good on Ino (and would look even better in a few years), but such embarrassing clothing certainly wasn't _her_ style, and she was already a bit risqué compared to most of their age-group.

She flitted from one window display to another. The variety and content were certainly indicative of a Hidden Village: stores selling the finest in kitchenware or gardening tools next to ones advertising the sharpest kunai and most concussive explosive tags; a grocer's market beside an apothecary that specialized in both cures for the medic-nin and civilian doctors as well as potions and poisons for the ANBU and Torture & Interrogation Squad; stores selling expensive dresses and kimono for the noble families hobnobbed with simpler-styled garments for the working families, which shared space with the functional, lightweight yet heavily-reinforced garb favored by ninja.

She finally picked one of the latter practically at random. It was not one she had visited before, but it had a very fine-looking blouse in the window that it assured the viewer was still sturdy enough for the hardiest ninja work.

She stepped inside, only to find that lounging behind the counter was none other than...

_"Tenten?"_ she asked, startled. She hadn't ever really gotten to know the girl - she'd always felt a bit shy around the older kunoichi, who managed to be both very pretty and extremely capable in physical combat.

The girl in question straightened, obviously trying to put a name to her face. "Sorry," Sakura said in a rush, "I did a bit of research when I made genin, you know, to see who else was out there. I kind of figured your family would own a weapons shop or blacksmith or something." That last bit was truer. She'd never met Tenten's family, but she'd assumed her superiority with weapons had to come from somewhere. Apparently, Tenten was herself one of Gai's so-called geniuses of hard work.

"Oh?" Tenten gave a crooked smile, her chin propped up on her open palm. "I'm surprised my name came up," she said.

She'd probably developed such an outlook in response to her teammates Lee and Neji's competitive nature, knowing them as she did, but it still bothered Sakura that Tenten felt the need to devalue herself.

"Of course your name came up!" Sakura argued aggressively. "You're probably the strongest female genin the Leaf has!"

It was flattery, but also truth: the ranks of kunoichi were always significantly lower than male shinobi, and few had the drive and will that she'd seen in Tenten. Her annoyance with the males of Team Gai rose a notch when that comment elicited a faint blush high on the older girl's cheeks, as though the girl herself didn't believe it.

On the spot, in the face of that slightly disbelieving look, she made a snap decision. She held out her hand for a handshake. "I'm Haruno Sakura, by the way. How would you feel about getting together for a match sometime?"

A few hours later, Sakura was walking home with her new purchases. Tenten had helped her pick out a new outfit: a light gray sleeveless shirt in an unusual design that wrapped around and tied on her left side, with a bit of red scrollwork along the hem and neck. A cherry blossom motif, embarrassingly enough. She'd picked up a set of black pants like Tenten's to go with the shirt at her new friend's insistence. The older girl swore up and down that they were more practical than her preference for spandex shorts. Over that, she was wearing a dark red overcoat with a band of white zigzagging along the bottom hem that fell to her knees, a mountain-stripe pattern. It was made out of some sort of heavy leather that Tenten had assured her would protect against thrown needles - which might be useful considering a certain upcoming mission in Wave Country - and even turn aside all but the hardest-flung kunai. It was specially treated with oils to be both water-proof and fire-resistant, was reinforced at the seams so that training weights could be attached if she so desired without tearing, and the coat contained several small inner pockets and caches that were about the right size for her medical supplies.

And it looked pretty good, too, despite what Ino had always told her about girls who wore red leather. In short, it was perfect. It had been way more expensive than she'd expected to spend - she'd been hoping to get a few outfits, but the one and the coat had eaten up most of the week's pay - but worth every ryou.

She'd also had enough left over - she suspected Tenten had undercharged her - for a very small roll of explosion tags, though not enough for the soldier pills she'd been hoping to procure from the Inuzuka who had been her supplier in the future. The tags were good quality, too. She couldn't wait to see Naruto go practically green with envy when she lit one for the first time just like he had in the future, and they only needed a tiny flare of her chakra to activate, which worked well for her meager reserves. They were timed rather than the sophisticated proximity tags that many high-level ninja favored, more for adding punch to her thrown kunai than for laying traps, but those tags were just out of her price range for now.

The change in wardrobe did something for her morale, too, just like the haircut had done. As if leaving behind her old outfit was the same as leaving behind the mediocre genin - intelligent but unremarkable in all other respects - who'd worn it.

Still, it was a start, but it wasn't enough. She'd been thinking about how to handle a certain A-rank missing-nin and apprentice. And for that she really would need those soldier pills and some other medical supplies.

Luckily there were a few options open to an enterprising young genin with her particular skillset that wouldn't have been available the last time she'd been this age. She even knew where to look to find them.

* * *

A/N: I've been trying to figure out Sakura's martial art style for a while now. In the fight with Ino in the preliminaries, they both look like they're using karate, maybe Shotokan or Kyokushin. But then sometimes she reverts to Naruto-esque brawling and throws haymakers and stuff. So, whatever. I'm now working off the assumption that Academy taijutsu is karate. Also, I decided to start naming my chapters.

Next chapter is what I like to call the side quest chapter. Like in those games where the protagonist has to swing by the casino for an hour or grinds a certain monster to collect profitable gems or whatever. Sakura finds herself in need of a war chest. Canon events shall resume in chapter 7 with the mission to Wave country.


	6. Let the good times roll

The state of medicine in the shinobi world was rather lacking, as a whole. Medic-nin needed exacting chakra control and years of study to be effective, which usually meant weakening their overall combat ability and keeping all that valuable time training them from being lost on the front line. Plus there was more glory - and money - to be found in taking on dangerous missions than in working at the hospital, it was no surprise the number of iryojutsu-users (the true medic-nin, not just ones who could patch a wound or prescribe a medicine) in the Medical Corps was smaller than even Ibiki's Torture & Interrogation squad.

And this was in Konoha, who had the largest contingent of medic-nin of any ninja village.

In addition, there hadn't been a true genius - one of those brilliant souls who revolutionized the field - since Tsunade gave up the practice almost fifteen years ago. Kabuto could have been that genius that revitalized the discipline and led the next generation of medic-nin, but something had gone wrong with him, had twisted him to use his medical genius for Orochimaru's horrific ends.

Well-adjusted people didn't join up with Orochimaru. Of course, some might say that well-adjusted people didn't become ninja at all…

Sakura only had three years of training and two of practice under her belt, but she was ahead of the curve in that those years had been under that same genius and her senior student, first as an apprentice and then as a colleague. And there had been some advancements made in those five years. War and necessity did as much to advance medical theory as it did combat jutsu, after all.

Even when their country was at peace - as much as ninja villages ever were - the short supply of qualified medic-nin meant that only ninja combat injuries and the most immediately fatal illnesses typically went to them. Civilian doctors and surgeons had to handle the rest, and some things were just beyond their ability.

Which led her to the Morikami, a merchant family which made Konoha their home. Their affiliations were known, making them useless as spies, which paradoxically made them safer. There were few who would attack a hidden village-backed merchant caravan and risk reprisal or even all-out war. Konoha, for its part, got reliable but low-risk C-rank jobs for their genin to cut their teeth on, a cut of the proceeds in taxes, and a wider selection in foreign goods than they might otherwise acquire.

The Morikami's first son and heir had been sickly since he was young, and no doctor they'd taken him to could help. Three years and change in the future, and the merchant group had been at their wits end. The business could go on without Haruka, but like most of the old families, the Morikami desperately wanted to keep the main family's line unbroken.

Tsunade had cured him in one afternoon, in between dealing with a cracked skull from a genin training accident involving a Doton jutsu gone wrong and brain damage from a Raiton electrocution in one of their chuunin.

"Hello," she'd told the pair acting as doormen. "I'd like to see the young master of the house?"

She was informed, quite rudely, that the young master was ill and abed, and no little girl could simply waltz in and see him.

"Beat it, little girl," the younger of the gate guards snorted. His partner, a slightly older man with an eye patch, didn't verbally agree, but also didn't let her in either.

With some difficulty, Sakura controlled her instinctive response, which would be to punch him in the mouth. Breaking their door guards wouldn't endear her to the Morikami.

She subsided for the moment and glanced beyond her current roadblock. The Morikami compound wasn't quite at the level of the grandiose Hyuuga or Uchiha compounds, but it wasn't small, either. And it shared a general aesthetic with those other traditional clan homes. If the Uchiha, Hyuuga and Senju were ninja nobility, then the Morikami factors were Fire Country's answer to the Wind merchant cartels or Wave's shipping magnate Gato. They shipped merchandise in from all over Fire Country and beyond, and were the backbone of dozens of smaller importer merchants.

The pair held their spears with familiarity; genin on long-term retainer to the family, probably, although they could be mercenaries or family-trained guards that had never seen the inside of the Academy. Unless they were more than they seemed, she could take them.

"Look," she said with strained patience, "I'm a medic, and a good one. I'm here to help. Let me through to talk to your master, and he can refuse me or hire me. This isn't your call to make."

She'd been talking to these idiots for the last quarter of an hour. When crafting her master plan, she'd forgotten that she didn't have Tsunade's political clout and genius reputation on her side this time.

"Morikami-sama doesn't want to be bothered, girl. He's had enough of you so-called medics treating the family's problem like an interesting puzzle. Leave, or we make you," the left one said threateningly. He pointed the business end of his spear at her.

Her patience was at an end, and her resolve not to make a scene was weakening. Her hand snapped out and grabbed the shaft of his spear near the head. A touch of Strong Arm and she ripped it out of his hand with all the effort it would take for her to disarm a particularly tenacious baby.

His fault for assuming 'medic' meant 'no fighting ability', and for letting a ninja of any class get that close to him in the first place.

She snapped it like a twig, then clubbed him in the head with the blunt end while he was still gaping and beginning to realize that he was in trouble. The guard face-planted ungracefully and Sakura stepped over him unhurriedly to face the second guard, who had gone from slightly wary to battle-ready.

"Now, unless you're significantly more skilled than your friend, can you just let me in?" she asked.

"Not that much more," One-Eye agreed. Nonetheless, he settled into a solid stance, knees bent and ready to lunge or dodge, off-hand on the shaft to guide the thrust when it came. "But would you allow an unknown to enter unchallenged? I have my duty."

"Look, I just want to-" she sighed. "Yeah, okay. You're not going to accept that."

She bowed her head slightly, part respect and part apology.

His charge was swift and deadly, but rigid. Predictable. She formed three bunshin and used his hesitation on which to strike to ghost aside, down and to the right, to his blind side.

He realized it - she assumed people aiming at his blind side had become commonplace for him - but he couldn't adjust quickly enough. If his weapon had been a yari, a supple bamboo spear, she might have been in trouble. But his spear was hardwood; more damaging, better able to parry a slashing attack and easier to handle, but less flexible and versatile.

As he flew past she spun and slammed her shin into the back of his leading leg, breaking his stance and sending him tumbling. He tucked into a roll but she stayed on him and hit him with a downward chop, pulling enough power that she wouldn't accidentally break his collarbone or collapse his trachea if her strike was off. But no, she'd hit correctly, and One Eye lolled on the ground, halfway to unconsciousness.

A touch to the forehead and a simple anesthesia jutsu, and he dropped the rest of the way into sleep. It was surprising how many medical techniques had applicability in battle, if one was willing to think outside the box.

Sakura thoughtfully dragged the insensate pair inside and dropped them in the bushes near the doorstep before she went inside, shutting the large wooden gate behind her.

* * *

A quick, polite knock on the door and she was soon speaking to the majordomo of the Morikami household.

The head butler, Ito, was simultaneously both an easier and harder obstruction to handle than the gate guards. Civilians might know intellectually that ninja graduated the Academy at 12 or even younger in exceptional cases, but emotionally they still saw her as a pretty little girl. Ito wasn't thinking of her as a potential threat.

Which was why this was also harder than it had to be, too. Because the man was treating her as a child trying to get an appointment with one of the most economically powerful men in the hidden village.

Eventually, she found the right lever to use when she pointed out that Ito merely needed to inform the Morikami patriarch that a medic-nin was here to see him about his son. Morikami Dorgen would know enough of the way ninja genius could express itself as young as six to not take her age too seriously.

And if not, well, she could mention the unconscious gate guards left in the azaleas.

Ito left her alone with her thoughts, but soon enough she was ushered in to see the merchant king himself.

Not having much experience with which to judge powerful leaders, she could only compare the Morikami's office to the Hokage's tower. The Hokage's sanctum was spartan except for wall scrolls containing beautifully simple examples of the calligrapher's art, as well as the huge window that overlooked all of Konoha and the Hokage Monument beyond. Sarutobi kept things uncluttered save for the massive desk at which the Hokage sat, covered with papers, the occasional knick-knack and, taking pride of place, an orb of crystal on a purple cushion. It was an open secret that Sarutobi could make the crystal ball show scenes from anywhere within Fire Country, perhaps of the entire world. No one seemed to know how it worked, though there were no end to theories.

If she had ever gotten access to the Forbidden Scroll of Sealing - the scroll purported to contain dozens of the Hokage's most esoteric arts - that would probably be the one she went for first, just to satisfy her curiosity.

Morikami's demesne, on the other hand, was swamped by a cheerful kind of clutter from foreign lands. The walls all but hidden behind colorfully woven wall hangings, entire taxidermied animals, a sword with a blade of what looked like blue crystal in a glass case complete with little plaque. An ancestral blade, perhaps, or something he had imported from some distant place. There was a shelf of books - not the more usual scrolls, but books - and several tiny, intricately crafted miniature ships. Likely replicas of ships he actually owned.

Ensconced amid the chaos was Morikami Dorgen himself. A very large man with a frame of muscle finally going to fat in his advancing years, and a face covered in thick, lustrous brown facial hair like the pelt of a bear. He looked eminently comfortable in his plain cotton kimono, though rings set with large gems sparkled on every finger.

"Ito told me what you've come for," the merchant king said, gazing down at her impassively. Even seated, he was taller than her 13 year old frame.

She began her pitch.

"You're a businessman at heart, Morikami-san. Well, I have a business proposition for you. Give me ten thousand ryo, and I will heal your son of his illness. After that, get in touch with me at any time I'm not on duty and I'll take care of any medical problem - discretely - for only one thousand. That's cheaper than any good medic-nin would charge. Chakra-healing isn't cheap, as I'm sure you know from consulting specialists for your son, but I need the money."

Better for him to think her controlled by her greed, she'd decided. Greed was easy to understand as a lever, and dealing with greedy people was second nature to a merchant lord.

"And why should I trust the word of a child when she says she can cure my boy?" the gruff, bearded Morikami patriarch replied.

"It's an understandable concern," Sakura agreed. The man had had his heart broken too many times in the past by overconfident young medics. "All I can say is that you may test my skill in any way you can think of. It's the real thing."

Morikami leaned back, stroking the ridiculous flowing waxed moustache that competed with his beard to see which feature would dominate his face more. He finally said, "I have a man in my employ with an old wound. The doctor who saw him after the injury said that it was beyond his skill."

"Is it One Eye?" she asked thoughtfully, meaning the eye patch-wearing gate guard. "How old is the injury? The older it is, the more difficult it becomes to heal…"

The longer the body had been a certain way, the harder it was to trick it into believing it had ever been different. It was one of the reasons an illness that occurred in their early years like the Morikami heir's was almost impossible to fix.

He nodded shortly. "_Jiro_," he stressed, "was injured a year ago in a skirmish with a Wind country assassin. Without his eye, he had to be relegated to gate guard duty."

Sakura wondered how good Jiro had been at his peak. Kakashi had always compensated fine for his covered eye. Whatever his original skill level, the one-eyed guard was a good choice for Morikami; worthwhile to fix if she was telling the truth, but not critical like letting an unknown medic at his son and heir.

Then she considered the injury. Eyes were tricky, but if the damage was only to the outer portion or to the photoreceptors, it could be done. If it was to the optic nerve itself, or if she had to regrow the entire eyeball, she might have the skill but not the chakra reserves to see it through.

"Do-able," she said with more confidence than she felt. "I might need more than one session with him if it's really bad, though."

"Then we have an accord," Morikami said simply.

Jiro picked that fortuitous moment to rush inside, spear at the ready, apparently recovered from his brief ass-kicking.

"Go with the girl, Jiro," the Morikami head commanded. "She's going to help you."

* * *

"What are you doing now?" Jiro asked. Either he was genuinely curious or he was worried the crazy little girl was going to poison him, she figured.

"The first step is to get a better idea of what's wrong," she explained. Her palm, wreathed in green chakra, was hovering just over his damaged eye. He had removed the patch, revealing a milky white orb that looked somewhat shriveled in the socket. Around it was the dark, rough, oddly shiny skin that came of a burn scar.

The wound was obvious, but the obvious was not necessarily all there was. With her chakra in him, she could get a sense of his insides, and what was wrong. She let her chakra seep into him and diffuse, letting it speak to her. Here was an old injury, not quite properly healed. Here, a break in the bone that had healed stronger than it had been. Here and there, the myriad of imperfections that everyone had, changes to the basic template that all humans possessed. And then there was the eye.

"Hm," she mused aloud, interpreting what her diagnostic jutsu was telling her. "Heat damage, but very little scarring. Either a too-near miss with a Katon, or this guy was low on power but incredibly precise."

"The former," he admitted grudgingly. "The burns healed, mostly, but the eye never did."

She shrugged, pleased. "Simple enough to fix, really. Be glad it wasn't a Raiton, those have all kinds of unpleasant side-effects so close to the brain. I am curious why you didn't get it healed at the hospital."

"The medic said it couldn't be done," he said quietly. The well-muscled young man drew inwards, making himself seem smaller.

She frowned. "What?"

That was right, Morikami had said he'd gone to a doctor. She'd thought she might have misheard. Jiro wasn't looking at her, but at his hands sitting still in his lap.

She began to scowl. "Eye injuries are tricky, but yours looks worse than it is. The cornea took most of the damage. Any medic-nin worth the name should have been able to fix it. Which means we either have an incompetent doctor on our staff, or a lying one. Who treated you?"

Still he remained silent. The man in his mid twenties looked like a repentant child. She couldn't figure it out. Just about anyone she knew would be spitting mad if something like that had happened to them. Perhaps he was like Hinata, quick to find fault with himself but slow to blame others?

Or maybe he was ashamed of the injury itself. Men and even some foolish kunoichi did that all too often, seeing it as an affront to their skills or toughness. It mostly just got in the healer's way and made them intractable and annoying or cause them to escape altogether before the injury was properly healed. She'd heard some horror stories from the older medics; Kakashi had been infamous for it during his ANBU years.

Still, that wouldn't fly. Since he was sitting down, her short height was tall enough to look him firmly in the eye. "Jiro. I need a name. I don't want to threaten you, but - well, I guess this is me threatening you. Don't piss off your healer. If we can put you back together, we can take you apart."

Jiro shuddered. Perhaps her bedside manner could use some work, but really, if that was the only bad habit she'd picked up from her hard-drinking, gambling addict sensei, she'd count her blessings.

"Yoshi," he finally said. "I think that was his name. I wasn't in great shape at the time, as you can imagine." He smiled wanly at his little joke.

"Thanks, Jiro. I'll see what I can do about him." She didn't recognize the name but then, four years before she had started practicing medicine, anything could have happened to the man. She cared about her people. Even if all she could do was kick it up the chain of command to Sarutobi, she'd do that.

She nodded at what the chakra probe told her, getting back to the real issue. "Okay, back to the wound itself. I'd wager you've had problems controlling your chakra ever since, right?"

One Eye said nothing, but the look on his face told her she was right. "Chakra-formed Katon fire, so close to clusters of nerve and chakra coil, not to mention being directly over one of your chakra Gates? Not too surprising. It happens sometimes to ninja who take damage to their core, too, where the other Gates and major chakra coils are."

She peered at the outer scar, let her fingers trace the hard, shiny flesh. "Yes. Tricky, but not impossible," she pronounced. "You probably won't get everything you lost back, but you'll be surprised, I think. Try not to blink for a minute."

She put her hands on him and called up her chakra, converting it into green healing chakra with a thought. What was needed here was one step above the usual battlefield medic wound-sealer, called Mystical Palm. That just stimulated cells and sped up natural healing, and an injury like this would never naturally heal. She needed to slice away the damaged part of the cornea, then literally regenerate the damaged portions, re-creating the damaged rod and cone photoreceptors and re-healing the cornea again.

True regeneration took more energy than repairing cuts or breaks, but fixing such minute damage was more a test of fine detail work and chakra control than stamina. Fortunately for her.

"Well, that's that," she said finally. The 'operation', such as it was, had taken under three minutes. She was somewhat depleted, but not to a dangerous level, and feeling pretty upbeat.

She lectured, "It might be sensitive for a little while. If you start losing your depth perception or if you start getting a burning sensation, come find me. And let Morikami-sama know you're fixed, okay? I'm going to go track down Haruka-san." She left Jiro blinking rapidly, trying to get used to depth perception.

She was soon turned around in the winding coils of the old house, and eventually needed to find and enlist the help of Haruka's personal maid, whose name she thought was Sella, to track him down.

The Morikami heir was situated towards the back of the house, in an airy room with a good view of the mountain. It seemed she'd caught him on a good day, since he was sitting up and enjoying the view. His cotton yukata was simple in design but well-made, comfortable and a pale green, and it did nothing to detract from his beauty.

Morikami Haruka was as eerily handsome at 18 as he would be at 20. Pale as a ghost - even his hair was a washed-out shade of ash-blond - with aristocratic features, long-fingered hands and cheekbones that could cut glass.

He reminded her of Neji, a bit. But Neji carried an assuredness formed on a bedrock of strength. Haruka was of a frailer sort, like he could blow away in a puff of milkweed fluff on a strong breeze.

He was as different from his father in looks and temperment as Naruto was to Sasuke, but he had a penetrating intelligence that would serve him well once his father retired.

"A medic? Forgive me, I don't know your name," he said, polite but slightly resigned. "Is it time for another healing session already?"

"Haruno Sakura. And not quite, Haruka-san," she introduced herself, still admiring his pallid beauty. Her heart was spoken for, more or less, but she could still look, right? "Now let's get you out of that top."

There was a brief sound of protest from the door, drawing their attention to the third person in the room. "You don't need to worry about his chastity with me, Sella-san," Sakura assured her. "I'm only thirteen, after all."

Well, she might have had the occasional thought - he was _really_ pretty - but that was all.

"I - would never - nonsense speaking -" the servant girl sputtered, drawing in on herself like a startled turtle. Extremely cute, a bit like a nineteen-year-old civilian Hinata. She could see why Haruka liked her.

Indeed, Haruka reassured her with a smile in his voice, "Don't worry, Sella. I'm sure I'm perfectly safe."

Forcing herself back to the matter at hand, she saw that Haruka had shrugged out of the top half of his yukata while they were occupied. She wondered how Sella actually managed to act as nurse to the invalid heir when she was getting incredibly red just from seeing that smooth expanse of chest. Haruka was looking a little red about the face, too.

Sella, she remembered, had the hugest crush on her master, and she rather thought the man returned it. Everyone could see it - except Sella and Haruka themselves, and possibly his father.

But never mind. Sakura placed her hands on his chest and formed her chakra-probe again. Yes, she thought, same as last time. She could feel, on the very edge of her chakra-sense, that tiny sense of Other, of not-Haruka.

She patted his thin chest reassuringly. "All right, you can put your shirt back on, Haruka-san. I'll need to talk to your father, then get the details and prep-work taken care of."

A few minutes later - and only one request for directions - and she was standing in front of Dorgen again.

She winced. It was unprofessional and a little embarrassing, but had to be done. "Morikami-sama, I need you to front me some of my wage to buy some supplies. A genin's salary just isn't high enough to afford everything I'll need."

The hulking Morikami patriarch thought it over. "How much do you need?"

She did a few quick calculations. Chakra ink, soldier pills, a few odds and ends… "700 to be on the safe side, I'm not sure what the local -" by which she meant the current time's "- prices are."

He gestured to Ito, who she had noticed had entered the room but had dismissed as unimportant. "700 ryou for the girl, Ito."

The butler nodded assent. Dorgen shifted his great bulk back to her. "When will you perform the operation or whatever you need to do?"

She blinked in surprise at the easy capitulation. Merchants were usually slower to relinquish coin than that. "Tomorrow should be fine. Afternoon-ish, probably. Can I ask -"

Dorgen shrugged. "Let's say you impressed me."

She smiled, a little bitterly, but there was pride there, too. "I'm going to be the next Tsunade," she said simply. She and Tsunade had quite a bit in common, despite the gulf that separated their social status, and not just in skills; they had failed everyone they had ever loved at one time or another, and others had had to pay the price for it.

But now wasn't the time to dwell on failures that hadn't actually happened yet.

"Perhaps you will be," Dorgen's eyes were calculating under his bushy eyebrows. "Perhaps so, indeed."

Sakura got her money, and got shown the door.

A few quick errands to the right suppliers were in order. Five years hadn't softened Inuzuka Akio's caustic tongue, she discovered; if anything, time would _mellow_ the fearsome seller of soldier pills! Of course, if she'd had to deal with hot-blooded young ninja popping her products like candy and then ending up in the hospital when the false euphoria made them take stupid risks, she'd probably be snappy, too. She couldn't remember how often Kiba wound up in the hospital for over-doing it while flying high on soldier pills.

And she also didn't have her medic-nin certification, proving she had been taught how to handle such things, to smooth the way. She did talk him around eventually by promising she wouldn't hold him reliable for any harm she did to herself, though she had to use more of her seed money than she'd wanted.

A few more quick stops on Shokunin street, though none proved very troublesome, and she was done.

* * *

Early to bed, and then running through the usual D-ranks. Weeding the garden was simple with Naruto's shadow clones, but babysitting was still a pain no matter how many extra pairs of eyes they had watching the brats. And they kept expecting her to have some mystical 'girl' knowledge about how to look after children. Even Sasuke, who was normally good at everything he turned his hand to, didn't have any idea about child-rearing, and even less interest in it. She'd had to threaten to show the kids what domestic violence looked like to keep them from running off to train and sticking her with the babysitting duties.

But finally the errands - or 'missions' - were done with and she could get back to her side job. The gate guards let her in without a tussle this time, and One Eye wasn't among them. She wondered if he was back on more important guard duties already. She found Haruka - after a little trial and error, she wondered briefly if they'd made their compound like this on purpose - only to find that she had an audience.

"Morikami-sama! And Sella," Sakura realized, the maid following her in, though she stayed near the door. She smiled a little. "Here to make sure I earn my paycheck?"

Not really wise, perhaps, but she was in a good mood.

"We will watch, and nothing more," Morikami Dorgen assured her.

Haruka shrugged at her, indicating the futility of arguing with his father.

Sakura nodded and pulled out a little reinforced bottle no bigger than her thumb. Holding it up to her eye, she saw the black ink give its peculiar shine. Chakra ink could shimmer with green or violet hues or gleam like arterial-red blood in the right light, depending on the recipe and techniques used in its creation. This one was gilded with a hint of gold. Quite pretty.

Some medics preferred inkstone, but personally she thought not having to grind her own ink every time she needed to use it outweighed the possibility of breakage in battle.

She also produced a thin brush and then got down to work. Two dozen seals soon formed a ring around Haruka's futon. First was 'poison'. Here was 'breath', there was its absence, and on the other side was 'stability of the whole', 'like gathering like' and 'the annihilation of invaders'. Between the two was the two-part seal that meant, 'the formation of order through chaos.'

"The trick," she told Haruka and the watching Dorgen and Sella, thinking perhaps they would stop hovering if they knew more, "is that what's making Haruka-san sick is something like a parasite. Regular healing jutsu treat the symptoms well enough; the weakness, the damage to the lungs. But not the underlying problem. No amount of Mystical Palm or even four-man sealing Resuscitation would fix him. Because no matter how much aid you give it, Haruka's system will never repel this parasite; it's not particularly deadly for an illness, but it's incredibly hearty."

She sat back and studied her drawn seals. She deemed them acceptable. "What you actually need is what we call the Six Point Extermination Seal. It's based on an old Kumo torture ninjutsu; basically, I'm going to burn the infection out, ideally without causing much damage to the rest of him."

"You mean all those tens of thousands of ryou paid for medic-nins were worthless?" Dorgen asked, displeased.

"Not really," she disagreed. "They kept your son alive, after all. 'Not particularly deadly' is still deadly; a fair number of people with this illness die within five years. Haruka-san has had it for, what, ten?"

She placed her hands in the center of the seal and dozens of small seals snaked their way outward, settling around the primary nodes. They radiated outward from Haruka like the spokes of a wheel with him at the center. There were a few areas she had equaled her Sannin sensei in, but the sealing arts were not one of them. Luckily, she could cheat like a Yamanaka on a written exam by using pre-set chakra constructs. They would serve well enough, but without that broader sealing knowledge she'd never be able to create her own or tailor the seals to individual cases like Tsunade could.

Something to think about if she ever had a few years free to devote to study.

"Okay, I'm ready to begin. This is going to hurt a fair bit even with my control as good as it is, Haruka-san. And I'll need to finish today or it'll spread again; in fifteen hours I'll have twice as much work to do. Oh, and this is going to be a little unpleasant to watch," she warned the two on-lookers.

"I understand that," Dorgen said stolidly. Sella gulped but nodded.

"Then… here we go." She placed her hands on one of the inked seals, and the seals lit up as she pumped chakra into the array. The chakra-formed seals glimmered like light thinly carved into the floor itself while the larger ones fairly blazed with green light.

Haruka was as familiar with pain as a ninja, and didn't want to distress the watchers. Only soft grunts and hisses escaped him as Sakura essentially set his nerve endings on fire as she burned away the bacteria infesting him. Slowly and methodically she worked her way from the lungs - containing the greatest concentration of invaders - outwards.

After a dozen minutes of this, she sat back and let them both take a break. She wiped her brow. This was a sustained B-rank ninjutsu as ninja classified such things. Chuunin-grade. Her precision let her cheat the chakra requirements, but she was still feeling pretty depleted. So she dug out a little cloth packet and popped a tiny spherical pill.

"Mmm," she hummed, enjoying the rush. Briefly her skin became supremely sensitive as the pill dispersed within her. She rode the cresting wave of euphoric energy from the soldier pill, doing her best to clamp down on her eagerness.

"Brace yourself, Haruka-san. The worst is over, I think, but I'll need to sweep you to make sure it can't come back."

She got back to work, even Haruka's quiet whimpers sounding magnified in her ears. Here and there she hunted through his body, seeking any pockets of resistance. Every now and again the burning would return as tiny holdouts were found and eradicated.

Finally, she pronounced him clean. They stared at each other, both breathing heavily. "Fluid in the lungs gone?" she asked. He breathed thoughtfully for a moment, before allowing as it was.

"Deep breath," she tested. He did as requested, no coughing in evidence.

"Well, uh, congratulations," she finally said. "I think we're done here. If the fatigue and pain comes back, let me know, but I think you're safe from a relapse."

Then she had to all but dive aside as Sella almost ran her over to check on the young master of the household. Sakura grinned. "He should be up to any strenuous exercise you can think of," she hinted to the maid.

Then the massive form of Dorgen joined the maid, guarded hope on his face.

Ito was pressing a heavy purse into her hand, probably more money than she'd ever had at any one time. "Eleven thousand," he told her.

She blinked. "That's -"

"Worth it," the butler said simply. "Morikami-sama has a great deal of money, but only one son. Of course, if you're cure doesn't work, we shall be having words."

"Ahahah," Sakura laughed a bit nervously. The aging butler could still apparently pull off 'intimidating' when he felt like it. Not that he had anything on Orochimaru's version - but then, she doubted any intimidation attempt would stick in her mind like the first time a ninja's mere presence was almost overwhelming enough to force her to commit suicide to escape him.

Still, walking home afterwards with her moneypouch a heavy weight at her side, her steps were light. A good job all around; a life saved, and well-rewarded for her efforts.

Her good mood lasted all of twenty minutes, until she ran into a red-faced, drunk, belligerent bridge worker from Wave Country.

_Oh, hell._

* * *

A/N: Some reviewers were having trouble imagining the new coat. For the mountain-stripe pattern, try looking up the male samurai in Disgaea 3, or the Shinsengumi in Rurouni Kenshin.


End file.
